Void
by Nisus
Summary: Crossover with Alien. On their first job after the BDM, the crew gets pulled into a series of events that spirals into death, despair and general nastiness. Continued in 'Nightmare.'
1. Friction

"So what do we do now?"

The fated question bounced off the walls of the mess, leaping from ear to ear of the men and women seated around the table that housed beakers of liquid, plates of food and the elbows of the aforementioned persons. Two men, four women, and Jayne; the latter being the one, in a typically blunt manner, who had posed the question.

No-one spoke for a stretch of time, going through the first of the five stages of grief.

The silence was destroyed when Zoe flung a decanter of water at the wall, shattering it into dozens of pieces. Nobody commented on the sudden outburst, some people trying to cling onto the last shreds of their denial while Zoe moved fitfully into the second stage. Zoe was bound to act differently from the others, and they made allowances for that – she was already dealing with a far greater grief than the others were with the loss of Serenity's pilot, and her husband.

Never one for working rationally and skipping straight to despair, Kaylee started to blubber and wail.

"What _are_ we going to do? We got no pilot, we got no shelter, we got nobody to give us a job!"

Inara tried to reason with the emotionally crippled engineer, clutching her hand reassuringly. "There's always work for a resourceful group of people like us, we just have to go and find it." Simon rubbed Kaylee's shoulder, although the action seemed more meditative than comforting as he stared off into space.

Displaying that Tam family trait in another capacity, his sister River, curled up on the far end of the table, muttered something under her breath. No-one saw fit to question what it was she said.

With Zoe looking ready to tear somebody apart with rage, Kaylee steeped in despair, Inara in bargaining with Kaylee (and by extension her circumstances), it was fitting that long before the conversation had erupted across the table, Mal had arrived at the final stage of his grief and accepted the circumstances around him.

He rapped his fist lightly against the table surface, but no-one paid him any attention. He rapped again, to the same effect. Then he cleared his throat. Then tried both in combination.

Finally: "Hey. Hey! _Hey!_"

Silence once again consumed the crew of the Serenity; their captain had something to say, and he slowly rose to his feet to say it.

When he thought the suspense was going to kill them, he finally uttered his directive.

"Salvage."

And that was all.

Puzzled glances evolved into Jayne raising his hand, as if he were in a school room. Mal nodded at him, apparently unaware of the ridiculous gesture.

"Uhm…sorry but…salvage?"

Mal nodded again. "Salvage."

"Yeah…but, uh…salvage?"

Inara sighed. "Before this gets too repetitive, allow me to intervene. Mal – what do you mean by salvage?"

Mal smiled suddenly, winningly. "Why, a smart girl like you Inara, I thought you would've figured it out by now." Ignoring the roll of her eyes, he continued after a moment with his explanation, as if allowing his brilliance to sink in. He started to pace around the table as he spoke.

"After the Alliance patched up our ship and we said goodbye to them yet again…well, I've been thinking. Where do we know a lot of ships got blowed up into tiny pieces recently?"

Kaylee frowned, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "In that there ion cloud by Mister Universe's place."

Zoe glanced sideways at Mal dangerously, as if to dare him to suggest they return to the place her husband was murdered by Reavers, but he ignored the look. "Correct."

"But the Alliance is bound to have that place squeaky clean by now."

"Also correct."

Inara directed a puzzled glance at the table top. "I don't mean to question your logic here, Mal…well, actually I guess I do – what are you talking about?"

Again, ignoring his female crewmate, Mal continued. "By now that cloud won't have a piece of debris worth two credits that rub together and make that lovely noise that just sings wealth. But the Reaver field does."

A stunned silence settled on the room, and then numerous indignant cries assaulted Mal's senses. He raised his hands, and slowly the din died to a manageable level.

"Hey now, listen up. Most of the Reavers were blown to pieces in that great big space battle we had ourselves a few weeks back, and the ones that're left'll be in the cloud, feedin' off the salvagers that had exactly the same idea we did. But as usual, we ain't your ordinary crew and I _definitely_ ain't an ordinary captain…"

He missed the muttered comment Inara made: "You can say that again…"

"…and as such we have two advantages over all of those ordinary boys and girls out there. One, we _caused_ that debris field they're pickin' their way through, and two, we aren't scared of the Reavers."

"Speak for yourself," stated Kaylee vehemently.

"I'm speakin' for myself and for all of you as well. Every other salvage captain has had the thought I just had, and every salvage crew has refused just like you did just now. The difference between us and them? We've already been to the Reaver's back yard, so doin' it one more time is a walk in the park."

"We've been there bef…? Mal, there's a 'verse of difference between disguising ourselves as a Reaver ship and sneaking past, and launching a salvage operation," argued Inara, Kaylee nodding aggressively beside her.

"Hey – at what point is this open to debate?" asked Mal, his hackles rising.

"At the point you tell us to go back to Reaver land and we stick you full of lead and throw you out of the airlock," growled Jayne. "There ain't no way I'm goin' back there. We got no gun outside the ship anymore, remember?"

"I remember," said Mal.

"So what're we gonna do if one of those boys comes lookin' for blood?"

Mal glared at Jayne, apparently without an answer to his very good question.

"Let's do it," muttered Zoe, very quietly and very dangerously. "I'd like the chance to repay some of those bastards in kind."

Mal happened to look Inara in the eye at that moment, but was forced to look away. Here eyes narrowed in understanding.

"Oh. Oh, I think I get it now. The both of you are hurting, and with you being soldiers and all, you automatically want to break things and make loud, shooty noises."

Zoe stared at Inara without noticeably moving. "So?"

"So you're both just going to get yourselves and the rest of us killed."

Zoe shrugged imperceptibly. "I ain't got that much more to live for."

"Well I do. If you're going on a…crusade, then you can count me out, and I'm pretty sure there are other people here who feel the same way."

Mal glared at her. "There you go again. Can't make up your mind one way or the other, can you? You're stayin', you're leavin', you're stayin', and what's this? You're leavin' again? Cause that's what not following my orders around here leads to."

Inara trembled slightly for a few moments, and then displaying the polar opposite of the composed calm she normally displayed, slammed her fist on the table in front of her. "Why have you got to be so gorram _stubborn?_" she exclaimed.

"Cause this is my ship, and those that occupy it follow my rules. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to leave."

"Mal…" started Simon. Mal looked almost in surprise in his direction. "We don't mean you any disrespect…it's just that going into Reaver space in an unarmed ship isn't exactly the best of ideas."

Incredibly, the socially inept doctor's words seemed to defuse the situation somewhat, as Mal relaxed his physical posture and Inara seemed to regain some of her composure.

"If you try and force me to go into Reaver space again, I'll stick you full of lead and throw you out the airlock," growled Jayne, perhaps imagining himself helpfully adding to the debate. Mal shot him a look.

"While that would happen in _never,_ I suppose…I can see your point," he _very_ reluctantly gave to Inara.

"And I can see yours," said the Companion, eager to fix the rapidly increasing rift developing between the crew. "I know what happened was wrong, but going and getting yourself killed isn't going to make it right." She turned to Zoe. "I don't mean any disrespect…but you and Mal are soldiers; Wash wasn't. Isn't. He wouldn't want you to go and die on his behalf…"

"Who said anything about dying?" interrupted the warrior woman.

"You did, when you started to talk about talking on the Reavers single handedly. Think about how close we came to being slaughtered during that last battle. That was _one ship's_ worth of Reavers. Imagine a station – or even a planet."

Zoe said nothing, but glowered at the table top as if it had offended her somehow.

Mal was working his jaw, obviously stuck on a moral fence. Inara pressed the offensive, cranking her Companion-trained charm to maximum.

"Mal…think of all we've been through. We're more than just a crew now. We're not disobeying…we're worried about you and Zoe. You're not thinking rationally. Don't finish what we all started like this."

Jayne was rolling his eyes and making small sounds of disgust, but it was Kaylee who drew Mal's attention while Inara spoke. Her normally happy eyes were brimming with sorrow, and she pleaded with Mal silently through the Companion's speech.

When Inara finished, there was silence for a few moments, and Mal shook his head slightly. "I finally found a force out there to make you not cheerful," he said softly, and Kaylee just sat there, exuding all of her emotion. Another few beats of silence. "Well, maybe it was a bad idea," Mal, falteringly, finally conceded.

Kaylee _whooped_ loudly, throwing herself from the bench she sat on and grappling Mal in a rough embrace. Inara smiled in delight, but Zoe stomped from the room, clearly displeased.

"There'll be no solace for that one," said River.

"Don't worry about her," said Mal. "I'll talk to her later."

River met his eyes, and looked at him as if he'd just spoken gibberish.

Frustrated, Jayne exclaimed, "Nobody's answered my gorram question properly yet! What are we going to _do?"_

Disentangling himself from the overzealous ship's engineer, Mal finally responded to Jayne's enquiry.

"Well, our first port of call is to find a port of call. I'll set us a course for the first system with a bar and a spaceport. After that…well, I guess we'll see."

Everyone sat basking in warm glow of renewed purpose a little too long for Mal's liking.

"…Well snap to it!"

The crew hurried to their feet and out of the room, leaving only Mal and River in the mess. Inara, the last to leave, turned to address Mal.

"I appreciate what you did," she said, referring to the way he backed down – something that had _never_ happened before. "I won't forget it."

Mal's eyes widened slightly. "Does that mean…?" But Inara floated out of the room, a coy smile on her face, before he could finish the question. He stood, grinning foolishly at the head of the table.

"You're going to get lucky," commented River, and the statement – especially who it was coming from – was enough to return Mal to normal and propel him – slightly creepified – out of the mess and towards the cockpit.

As the Serenity turned and made for the nearest planet to its current location, the crew bustling about its metallic interior were blissfully unaware of the wheels of fate that kept on turning, nor the new destiny that awaited them…lurking in the darkness of space.

_**Next on Void:**_

"**_Well I'll be…" said Mal, grinning. "What the hell are _you_ doing here?"_**

_A/N: Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance, for anyone who is/was confused._

_Welcome to my attempt at Firefly! At the end of each chapter, I'll be adding just a mere sentence to give you a hint of what's going to come. Sometimes it'll be but the first sentence of the next chapter, others a key line from an early scene. The reason? I've never done it before, and want to test it out._


	2. Release

_A/N: Something I (embarrassingly) forgot to mention last chapter is that, of course, I own neither Firefly nor Serenity, and even my own original places and characters aren't truly my own because they inhabit the same wonderful universe that Joss Whedon span from his wild imagination. However, you guys can keep your paws off them – they _are_ still technically mine :)_

The cargo ramp of the Serenity whirred down and revealed the rolling green pastures of the heavily agricultural planet of Taurus. Perhaps predictably, Kaylee was first among the crowd of the crew, inhaling the air of the planet eagerly as it rushed into the interior of the ship.

"_Ahh!"_ she exclaimed, releasing her first breath of fresh air in what felt like eternity. Behind her, several of her companions made similar, though much more understated, expressions of satisfaction.

As the engineer bounded down the ramp, Mal was muttering something to Zoe, probably a mild continuation of the conversation they had had in her quarters. Whatever Mal had said to her had worked, as she now seemed quite tranquil, but she looked anything but happy – and an unhappy Zoe has on several occasions meant a violent Zoe.

A small dirt path led from the spaceport down into the city proper; although it couldn't be realistically called a city. It was awarded the title because it was the settlement with the highest population on the planet. Quaint cottages lined the cobble stoned streets, and people here evidently still rode bicycles, because there were several of the contraptions wobbling along the unsteady surface of the road.

The first of their needs fulfilled – the spaceport – they sought out their second; namely, a bar. They found one close to their landing spot, presumably based so it attracted maximum patronage from the spacers that frequented the planet.

Inside, it was as you'd typically expect of a spacer bar.

The booze was cheap and nasty, and so were the girls. A couple of dozen burly men sat around at rickety tables eying each other warily, and not for the first time Mal seriously considered that he must be the best looking spacer out there. At least, based upon the occupants of the room. Except for the guy sitting at the table in the corner. The guy looking at him and smiling…

Delayed recollection allowed the man to approach Mal and extend his hand, and as he grasped and shook it, the memory came flooding back to him.

"Well I'll be…" said Mal, grinning. "What the hell are _you_ doing here?"

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say not the same reason you're here," was the reply. The man nodded at Zoe, who grumpily returned the motion.

"Crew," said Mal, turning to face those who didn't know the newcomer. "This is Harvey, we fought together in the war. Harvey, this is my crew."

"Well, well," said Harvey, taking Inara by the hand and kissing the back of it, "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"And I yours," said Inara graciously, curtseying slightly. Mal rolled his eyes.

"Do you ever change?"

"Yes. Just…some parts of me don't."

"I think I know which part," commented Inara dryly, and Harvey waggled his eyebrows at her.

"Come on, let me buy you all a drink."

Mal pretended to stagger back slightly, clutching his chest slightly in shock. "I take it back – you _have_ changed."

He led them to his table in the corner, and Mal got another look around the bar – as always, on the lookout for trouble.

The holo-monitor mounted behind the bar was just finishing an infomercial, completing a no doubt riveting explanation to the bored patrons of the bar; _"WHY WY?"_ It flashed to a news report that told of the Alliance's progress in hunting down the remainder of the Reaver fleet. They had naturally spun the PR nightmare into a semi-plausible explanation about drawing the threat to society on the outskirts of the core systems into a confrontation that would soundly eliminate them. They smeared mud on the reputation of their scientist Mal and the others had found the testimonial of on Miranda – right before she was…well, murdered seemed like too light a term to describe what the Reavers had done to her. No-one believed them – the majority anyway – but what was anyone going to do about it? It was just a step – a necessary, significant step, but just a step nonetheless – in the process of removing the Alliance from power.

That is, if you had such inclinations. Mal didn't really care one way or the other. He had already done his part, fighting for the Independents, and then again by exposing the truth about the origins of the Reavers. The second one he hadn't even done on purpose, it just kind of happened. Malcolm Reynolds was no man's puppet. When the Alliance tried to force his hand like they did when they dispatched their Operative to retrieve River from his custody, then in Mal's humble opinion, they deserved the consequences.

"Crazy, huh?" said Harvey beside him, his hand clapping on Mal's shoulder, snapping him out of his reverie. "The Reavers might be finished before long! I hear they're on the run – there are too many of them to openly engage, but the Alliance is herding them around, pickin' a few off at a time, pushin' 'em towards a system where their forces are gathering."

"And where'd you hear something like that?" asked Mal, and Harvey just tapped his nose.

"If I told ya, I'd have to kill ya."

"If you told me, you could _try,_" returned Mal, taking a swig of the beer Harvey had just ordered for him. Harvey just chuckled to himself.

"So…how've you been?" said Mal's old war buddy after a few moments.

"Better," said Mal, truthfully. "Our last stunt cost me my pilot and everyone who'd do business with us. Including a very good friend of mine."

"Yeah, I heard about that, too."

"What else you heard?"

"I hear the support for the Alliance is crumbling left right and centre."

"What's new?"

"You're new," said Harvey, discarding his drink and turning to stare at Mal intently. "Your little PR event has shook up the Alliance at every level. Bureaucrats who have been loyal for decades are starting to question their loyalty. Soldiers who'd have fired at women and children without a moment's hesitation are starting to worry about every order they receive. And most importantly…the _people_ are starting to question whether or not they really like living under Alliance rule."

Mal smirked cynically. "Maybe if we lived in a perfect 'verse…"

"I don't know where you've been holed up the last few weeks, Mal, but since your broadcast…well, from here on in you can expect anti-Alliance sentiment to be growing. Even the Core Worlds are starting to grumble."

"Is there a point to any of this?" asked Mal, starting to grow weary of the conversation.

"Yeah. Big things are coming, Mal. The Independents are back."

Mal stared stonily at Harvey, and then pushed his cup away on the bar. "I think I've heard 'bout enough of this as I care to hear."

As he went to turn away, Harvey grabbed his shoulder. "Mal…wait just a second."

"Trouble, sir?" Zoe had almost instantly materialised behind Harvey.

Mal eyed Harvey and then returned Zoe's gaze. "Nothing I can't handle."

She nodded and went to return to the table, but – in a very, very bad move – one of the spacers sitting at the table she walked past slapped her behind, laughing raucously with his friends.

Things degenerated quite predictably after that.

Zoe grabbed the nearest bottle – from the hand of another big man sitting at the opposite table, and smashed it over the original offender's head.

"Not again," muttered Inara, and the crew of the Serenity scrambled to assist Zoe.

The man whose beer she had stolen was instantly up, indignantly howling and went to attack Zoe, but Mal punched him across the face. The spacer went down, and all of his friends stood up.

The barman crouched behind the bar, anticipating – quite rightly – what would happen next.

The entire bar erupted in violence as the minimum-intelligence men and women saw some slight against their person someone else had perpetrated. Tables were thrown over, bottles thrown, chairs upended and pretty soon the modest drinking establishment would be better advertised as a free for all.

Mal intercepted a thrown fist only to receive another to the jaw. Harvey all but bulldozed into the fray, grappling two thugs to the ground. Zoe was beating on the guy who had committed the crime of pissing her off.

Mal staggered to his feet, motioning vaguely with one hand behind him and wiping his nose with the other. "Zoe…?" When she paid no attention whatsoever to him, he shrugged and tackled another participant of the brawl.

Back at the table, Inara was confronted by a tank of a man, squeaked in alarm and cowered before his rush. He faltered when confronted by this beautiful woman, and for a fatal moment let his guard down. Her opportunity ready to be taken, Inara brought her foot straight up between his legs. The spacer moaned once and then collapsed, managing to break a chair on his way down. The Companion grabbed Kaylee's wrist and together they picked their way across the bar to the exit.

"No, wait!" cried Kaylee. "What about Simon?"

"Who's Simon with, Kaylee?" was the measured response.

"Riv…oh right. Yeah. I guess we'll see them outside."

Across the way, Jayne roared and picked a brawler up by the back of his shirt and the seat of his pants, and hauled him over the bar into the assorted stacked bottles behind.

"Your man's quite excitable," commented Harvey, and Mal just grunted.

"He just likes to make loud, smashy noises. And he isn't my man," he added indignantly.

Jayne leapt onto the bar and heaved a chair across the room, hitting someone square in the face. He laughed with childlike pleasure and, kicking someone else on his way down, jumped back into the fray.

River sat calmly as the table she sat in front of was wrenched from in front of her and slammed into a gang of four traders, but as a spacer ran towards Simon, she was up in a flash, grabbing the man by the fist and containing his motion so he was suddenly still.

"Not that one," she said. "He has neither the time nor the disposition."

The man laughed noisily and tried to shove River out of the way, but she turned him around, forced him to his knees and neatly broke his arm. The spacer – who was easily twice her size – screamed in pain, and a quick jab to the temple ensured he was out for the count.

Simon muttered his thanks, but River just returned to her seat. A bottle narrowly missed hitting her in the face, but she just giggled. Simon edged a little closer to his sister.

Mal decided that they'd had about as much fun as they were going to have, and called out to Zoe. She responded to him this time, abandoning beating on the very original offender and his friends, and worked her way towards her captain.

"Sir!" she called.

"I think it's about time we left this fine establishment," commented Mal, dodging a flying bottle.

"Agreed."

"Well, we've had a swell time, we're glad for y'all hospitality – hey, woah!" cried Mal as two spacers grabbed him roughly from behind, lifted him into the air and threw him through the window.

The ionised fragments of the window flickered and died around him as he sat, bemused on the road outside. As the window reformed behind him, Zoe and Harvey exited the bar more conventionally.

"…But we've got a prior engagement," finished Mal. Inara and Kaylee were watching the proceedings with no small amount of amusement from the side of the road. As Zoe and Harvey helped Mal to his feet, River and Simon slipped outside and joined their little menagerie.

As they started to walk down the street, Simon stopped. "Oh! Wait, what about Jayne?"

"He'll be fine," said Kaylee, catching him around the waist and worming her way under his arm. "He's having fun."

"Oh…yes, I forgot Jayne is quite different to everyone else sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

They started to walk again, trailing behind the others, and the others discretely allowing them some private time.

"I thought that was real sweet, the way you took care of River back there," said Kaylee.

Simon thought quick. "The way I…? Oh yes. Well, I _am_ her brother. It's just me and her against it all out here."

Kaylee snorted. "You're not a very good liar, Simon. I saw the way River took care of that guy…from outside, through the window."

"I can't help it if I have a super-sister," commented Simon, going on the defensive slightly. "I'm not a fighter…I heal people."

"I know! And you're a _great_ doctor. I think it's cute the way River looks after you in places like that. It kinda makes up for the way you looked after her all this time on your own. She's getting better now that…well, now that certain things that were bothering her have been fixed."

"Since Miranda, you mean. Yes, she's a lot calmer, and seems more in control of herself. No violent outbursts since, anyway."

A playful smile worked at Kaylee's lips. "And while River takes care of guys who try and break your face, I get to take care of…other parts…" Her hand led seductively down his chest, and a loud cough made Simon squirm with embarrassment and Kaylee's smirk even wider.

Mal's eyebrow was arched in wry amusement. "Can I interest either of you in a room?"

"Yeah, I'm very interested," said Kaylee, and Simon just flushed.

Harvey glanced over at Zoe. "That guy in the bar got a beating for less than that."

"And now she feels much better," said Mal. "Right Zoe?"

"Right you are, sir."

"Shall we loiter here for our hired muscle to catch up?" suggested Inara, and Mal nodded.

"Seems like as good a place as any." He turned to Harvey. "Now, what were you saying?"

Harvey eyed everyone around him uneasily. "Uh, well, what I have to say is…"

"Just out with it. They'll find out eventually. Serenity is a very small ship."

"Well…like I said, the Independents have reformed. They're ready to take the fight to the Alliance and make things right again. The way we fought for it to be, Mal, Zoe."

"We lost, Harvey," said Mal, and Zoe nodded behind him. "Move on."

"But don't you see, Mal? Maybe we didn't lose. Maybe…maybe we've just been waiting for the time to come back."

"No, Harvey, I'm pretty sure we lost. Zoe?"

"Yeah…I seem to remember losing."

"And we can't both be wrong," said Mal. "So why don't you stop tainting the name of what we stood up for and leave those things that live in the past right where they are."

"You're wrong, Mal. We can do this."

"No, you're wrong," said Mal, his voice taking an edge. The crew shuffled uncomfortably as they did whenever the war was mentioned in front of Mal, and Harvey sensed the change in them. "You call yourself the Independents, but all you really are is a group of people either too hung up on the past to let go or an opportunist looking to take advantage of people like you. Don't pretend what you're doing is anything but what it is. And I won't have any part of it. Just…just let the past stay buried."

Harvey's lip pursed, and he shook his head, and the two men obviously had nothing more to say to each other. "Well, if you change your mind ­–"

"I won't."

"– I'm sure you'll be able to find me. What's about to go down is big enough for anyone to find us." With that he wandered off down the street.

There was an awkward silence as Mal and Zoe exchanged significant glances, but Jayne provided a useful social diversion when he trotted up to them wielding severed chair legs in both hands.

"You guys missed a hell of a fight!" he exclaimed, and everything was back to normal again.

"So what now, sir?" asked Zoe, who had obviously relieved a lot of pressure back in the bar, and so seemed a little more like her old self.

Mal stretched and dusted off his jacket as he spoke. "I know someone here who might be able to hook us up with some work."

"A friend?"

"More of a friend of a friend of a colleague of…some guy I beat up once in a bar."

"That's a pretty vague way to do business, Mal," commented Inara, and she received his level gaze.

"That's all we have right now," he said evenly, and she knew when to back down.

"Well then cap'n," said Kaylee, hanging off Simon's arm, "Lead the way!"

Mal turned and led the small crowd of oddballs along the cobblestone path, the afternoon daylight dancing across them.

_**Next on Void**_

"**_The job is, we gotta take these crates," Mal slapped one for emphasis, "On that fine piece of hardware…" Naturally, he pointed at Serenity. "…Across to the next planet over, in less than a day. Questions?"_**

_A/N: Stealing from a page in Tyramir's book, thanks to the man himself and also BlueEyedBrigadier for your reviews and feedback – much appreciated, guys._


	3. Employment

"The job is, we gotta take these crates," Mal slapped one for emphasis, "On that fine piece of hardware…" Naturally, he pointed at Serenity. "…Across to the next planet over, in less than a day. Questions?"

Kaylee piped in. "Isn't that a little…uhm…easy?"

Mal nodded. "Sure is, but their regular runner got hit by a car on the way into work yesterday and, well, long story short, the job needs doing and we're the first people to ask. Half payment now, half when we arrive on Aries."

"Sounds good to me," said Zoe, grabbing the first crate and heaving to. The rest of the crew fell in line quickly, all pitching in, carrying the containers across the spaceport, up the ramp and into Serenity's cargo bay.

The loading done with and over, Mal sat with River in the cockpit of the Serenity and together they lifted off the vessel. Mal still didn't quite trust his ship in the hands of a mentally unstable girl, but she hadn't yet crashed the thing. She was also perfectly content to lift off, but the moment the Serenity achieved orbit she would drift off into one of her stares, leaving control to the person across from her – whether there was anyone present or not.

With Mal preoccupied with piloting the ship, it was left to Zoe to lead the others to inventory their cargo and organise it in such a way that it would be easy to offload. While this wasn't really necessary, as they would be being offloaded in a few short hours anyway, it occupied the crew's hands and minds. It also allowed a focal social point to allow that most basic need of the human spirit; that of the chit-chat.

"Secure those crates," ordered Zoe, pointing to the piles of containers Simon and Kaylee were pretending to work on. "Move this stack a little to the right. How many crates in this row?" And so on. It wasn't even a very large number; it helped to go through the motions, however.

"Doctor!" called Zoe, and Simon turned to give her his attention. "Tell us a story, to pass the time," she said.

"Uhm…I'm afraid I don't really…_have_ any…" started Simon, but Jayne pre-empted him.

"A long time ago," he started, pausing to heave a crate onto the stack he was working on with a grunt. "There were a group of traders – smugglers, really – takin' a shipment across the system. They weren't a large crew; feisty first mate, overly cheerful engineer, a classy Companion, a dumb captain, a geeky doctor and his psycho sister. As well as a real strong man of a man, who'd sweep any woman off her feet and beat tar outta any man standin' between them."

Zoe's eyebrow arched. "Anyway," she prompted.

"Anyway, they're all workin' in the cargo hold when they hear somethin' a tap-tap-tappin' on the hull. At first, they figure it's the psycho, but then they realise…" He moved close to Simon. "She might be super strong, but she can't _breathe in space._"

"A fact I recall you trying to test on several occasions," muttered Simon, and Jayne broke from his narrative, indignant.

"What you talkin' 'bout, Doc? I'm tellin' a story here. A work of _fiction_, as they say."

"Oh, of course. My mistake. Please continue your _fiction_."

"I will. Thank you." He bowed floridly. "Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. So the dumb captain finally figures out what's wrong, and he orders the feisty first mate out to see what's bangin' against the side of the ship."

He paused for emphasis.

"_She didn't come back,"_ he finished in a spooky whisper. His audience, however, remained unimpressed. He continued despite the poor reception. "One by one, the other crew went out to see what they could see, but none of them ever came back. Finally, it was just the dumb captain and the big strong hunk of a man left over. The captain orders him out…and he gets himself shot and thrown out himself."

Zoe rolled her eyes. "What's it with you lately wanting to shoot Mal and throw him out the airlock?"

"Hey, work of fiction, remember?"

"Right, I forgot."

"It might contain…certain elements of reality, however."

"Is there a point to this story?" asked Kaylee.

"Yeah," said Jayne. "The story is, no matter where you hide, the Night Stalker's always gonna be right…be…hind…you!"

Kaylee rolled her eyes, turned and came face to face –

She screamed, dropping the crate she was carrying, shielding her eyes automatically –

- With River.

Jayne bellowed with laughter, and even Simon was smiling lopsidedly as he stooped to pick Kaylee up.

"My sister isn't _that_ scary, is she?" asked Simon.

"The children are crying," observed River. "They can't find their mother…she's been taken away."

"Uhm…don't answer that," said Simon.

"You bun tyen-shung duh ee-dway-ro!" cried Kaylee. "That wasn't funny!"

"I ain't laughin'," said Jayne, a broad grin plastered across his face.

"I don't get it, anyway," admitted Simon. "What's a…Night Stalker?"

Kaylee huffed and picked up the crate she had dropped. "It's a stupid child's story," she said. "It's the Boogeyman for space faring types."

"Don't pay it any attention, Doctor," said Zoe, smiling ever so slightly with her eyes. "Jayne just likes to scare Kaylee sometimes."

"Yeah, just ignore him, Simon. That's what the rest of us try and do." She stuck her tongue out in Jayne's direction, but he just pretended to catch the expression in his hand and put it in his pocket.

"Alright, let's finish stowing these crates," announced Zoe, and everything was business again.

When they landed, Mal was first out of the ship and heading to the building their job needed delivering to. He called for Jayne and Kaylee, and the engineer came trotting after him, slightly perplexed.

"But why do I need to go, cap'n?"

"Cause we're deliverin' to a machine shop, thought you might want to come along, take a look-see."

"Ooo, shiny!" exclaimed Kaylee far too cheerfully. Mal shook his head slightly. That girl got far too excited about anything that ticked and whirred.

"The mule is ready to go, right?"

"Yep! They just need to start her up and press go."

The machine shop, when they arrived, wasn't a half-bad establishment. A grotesquely fat man sat behind a desk, beyond the various bits and parts on special display. Mal thought this a bit odd; a machine shop wasn't a showroom, an engineer would most often come in looking for something that had fallen off the ship…at least, that's why he sent Kaylee to pick up parts…not come in and browse. But, Mal wasn't an engineer, nor a machine shop owner, so what did he know about such matters?

He walked to the desk and tapped it three times, attracting the fat man's attention. The sweat was rolling off him like a torrent, and Mal forced his expression neutral, to avoid informing the man of what he thought of his personal hygiene habits; or lack thereof.

He looked up with beady little eyes and absorbed the faces of the newcomers.

"We're here to make a delivery," said Mal, smiling. The man didn't really emote at this statement, but jerked his head back, indicating a back room. Exchanging a glance with Jayne, Mal led the others to this doorway and went through it. Beyond was a small back office containing a small cherub of a woman.

She looked at them suspiciously.

"Delivery?"

"Ah!" she exclaimed, jumping from her chair to the floor. She wasn't very tall, and was quite round, but her face contained all the joviality of a child. At least, it did to people after they'd told her they had something she wanted. "Right on time."

"Well, when we say we're gonna deliver somethin', we deliver it," said Mal. Jayne gave him a sideways glance that spoke volumes.

_What the hell are you talkin' about, Mal? There's plenty of times you dumped cargo, didn't deliver, gave the stuff back, gave it to another person, sold it on…_

The look Mal returned said significantly less: _Shut up, Jayne._

"I'm glad we found you," the woman was saying, "Our normal ship met with a calamity and – well, I'm sure you were told the grisly details, but you really saved our hides."

"Glad to be of service," said Mal warmly. "In exchange for cash, of course."

"Hm?" The woman was distracted by rummaging through a filing cabinet. "Ah, yes. Payment." She pulled a file from the cabinet and sort of…_waddled_ back to the desk. "How do you normally accept it?"

"Oh, I'm easy," said Mal. "Unmarked credits, split ten ways and sealed in brown fabric bags, two of which'll be checked at random by me and then all sealed up in an also unmarked cargo crate."

She blinked. "Uhm…yes, I'm sure we can arrange that. It'll be a few moments."

Mal smiled again. "I'm in no rush."

"Which leaves the matter of…where the cargo is?"

Mal nodded, and signalled electronically to Zoe that she should bring the cargo across in the mule. "It's on its way."

"Of course, we will check the cargo before we permit payment, but I don't see that we will have a problem."

Kaylee dropped something after fidgeting with the items on a shelf behind Mal, and sheepishly retrieved it, blushing slightly. Mal gave her an arched eyebrow, and she firmly placed both hands in the pockets of her overalls.

The woman was eyeing Mal speculatively. "What is it that you do, Captain Reynolds?"

Mal shrugged. "Might be easier askin' us what we don't do."

"Hmm." She hopped back down from the chair. "If you're willing, perhaps we can discuss another business venture."

"I'm all ears."

"It's nothing you're not familiar with. I need another shipment delivered, however this one is slightly farther afield."

Mal scratched his eyebrow. "One thing I object to is doin' business with someone and not knowing their name…"

"Oh! I apologise." The woman offered her hand. "The name's Beka. I run the business here that doesn't involve nuts and bolts."

"Charmed," he said, shaking her hand. "Now what's this job?"

"Simple; travel to Beaumonde and make the delivery inside three days. I take it your ship is fast enough?"

Mal nodded. "She is. It's a bigger job than this one, though, so my payment…"

"Will increase accordingly, you can be assured."

"What's the cargo?"

"Just one crate."

Mal narrowed his eyes. "One crate?"

"Yes. One very valuable crate. Which you must not open under any circumstances."

"That sorta goes without sayin'."

"Granted. But it is especially vital you do not open this one. Accidents happen, Captain; things get dropped, crew members grow inquisitive…_do not_ open this crate."

Mal smirked. "I recall a similar story 'bout a box. Seems like there's nothing you can do to make someone do somethin' like forbiddin' 'em from doing it."

"Well remember another tale – that about curiosity and cats," said Beka icily.

"Is this crate dangerous?"

"Only if you open it."

Mal pursed his lips. He knew better than to ask what was contained within the crate, but they needed the job and the cash, and heading towards Beaumonde meant a better chance of a job after this one…

"Alright," said Mal. "You've got a deal. On one condition. I ain't gonna ask what's in there. But if that thing is a weapon that's gonna help the Alliance, I don't want a part in it. And I ain't even gonna get into what a local machine shop is doin' transporting weapons systems."

Beka smiled ever so slightly. "It isn't going to the Alliance. And you don't have to worry about what's in it, or how we came by it. Just deliver it on time to our contact on Beaumonde."

"Then we're shiny."

Mal beeped, indicating Zoe was now outside with the delivery. He motioned to Beka. "Shall we?"

"I recognise that you asked for an unmarked container to place your payment in," said Beka, approaching the small gathering outside the machine shop. "But under the circumstances I thought it wise to indicate which crate contains the item, and which your credits."

Mal nodded. "Sounds wise. Wouldn't want any accidents out there." He called to his engineer, who was admiring the contents of the delivery they had just made. "Kaylee!"

She turned, startled, and then moved to join the others on the mule.

"You like them?" asked Beka as she passed.

"Yeah," gushed Kaylee. "They're real pretty." She climbed onto the mule, and Beka picked one of the beaded necklaces from one of the crates they had just delivered.

"Here," she called, tossing the fashion accessory to the engineer, who plucked it out of the air eagerly. "A bonus."

"Wow, thanks!"

"Well, good luck, Captain."

Mal grinned. "My ship doesn't run on luck, Beka, but it's appreciated."

The mule groaned to life, a small payload in the rear.

Kaylee was smiling happily, fastening her new piece of jewellery around her neck. "Wasn't that a mighty nice woman?" she enthused, admiring the almost incandescent beads of the necklace.

"Yeah," said Mal, gazing into the distance. "Very friendly…"

Kaylee gave him a disparaging look. "When are you gonna start trustin' people, cap'n? Some people are just good and kind like you."

Not rising to the bait, Mal remained pensive. "Maybe. Maybe not."

The rest of the ride to the ship was uneventful, and they returned to find the rest of the crew gathered in the cargo hold waiting for them. Zoe had cast an inquisitive eye over their small cargo, but asked no questions. Mal knew that wouldn't hold with the others, and prepared to answer some questions.

"Okay folks, we got ourselves a new job," he announced, climbing off the mule. "Another cargo run, but this time it's but one crate, so those lower back pains I know you're all feelin' get the day off."

"One crate?" asked Simon.

"Yup."

"Of…?"

"No idea. The job is to take it to Beaumonde, no questions asked – so I didn't ask any."

"But…"

"No buts, Doctor. A job is a job, and if someone sees fit to not disclose the contents of a cargo crate, then that's okay."

"What if it's dangerous?"

"I thought I said no buts?"

"That wasn't a…" Simon shook his head, frowned. "Well is it?"

Mal paused. "Only if we open it."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Frankly Doctor? I have no idea. Chances are our employer doesn't want anyone to see what's inside the crate and tried to scare us into not opening it. Maybe it is something dangerous – I just don't know. The point is, not one of us is gonna take a peek, and that includes your sister, Doctor."

"River wouldn't…"

"I don't care whether she would, might, may – you keep her away from this crate. I don't wanna have any accidents. Just in case. And that goes for the rest of you. After we take it off the mule, I don't anyone near it until we reach Beaumonde. Understood?"

There were several mumblings as the crew consented, but Mal could see that curiosity was burning in Simon's eyes.

"Alright then, let's get this thing unloaded."

It was cold to the touch. An unmarked cargo container approximately five feet square, and about three feet deep. It took six of them to lift it and shuffle across the bay, River watching them expressionlessly from the gangway above.

As they disbanded to their various stations, Mal took Zoe aside and issued a single directive: "Keep an eye on the Tams."

Once again, their cargo secured within the ship, the Serenity soared into orbit and towards Beaumont.

_**Next on Void**_

"**_I don't want to open it…I just want to know what's inside."_**

_Thanks to lonelydonutserenityBDM and Tyramir for your reviews. Keep 'em coming, guys._


	4. Curiosity

"Doctor!" called Zoe. Simon froze and turned around to greet the rapidly approaching first mate.

"Yes?" he asked, as innocently as he could manage.

"The Captain needs you to be working on a few things in the Infirmary," she said, leading him from the cargo bay to his office.

"What needs doing?" he asked, stepping into the room.

"Oh, just to stay put for a few hours," said Zoe. "So do tests, whatever you do to keep busy down here. You aren't gonna open that crate."

"I don't want to open it…I just want to know what's inside."

"Exactly. Get to work, Doctor." She took a seat in the common area pointed directly at the doorway to the Infirmary.

Simon stood awkwardly for a few moments, and then began to tinker around with a few of his instruments. After thirty seconds or so, he abandoned the tools and turned to face Zoe, exasperated.

"Aren't you in the _least_ bit -"

"No."

"Can't we just -"

"No."

Simon sighed, frustrated. "You heard Mal. What's in that box could be dangerous."

"You heard the Captain – it might not be. You _also_ heard him say that no-one goes near it until we reach port."

"But what if it kills us?"

Zoe smirked slightly. "Come on now, Doctor. What are the chances of that?"

Simon threw up his hands and withdrew into the Infirmary, trying to busy himself with menial tasks, but his mind kept wandering to the metallic box stored in the cargo hold. A fierce curiosity was a part of his nature, and he couldn't just flick a switch as the others had evidently done. He _had_ to know what was inside that crate – mostly for peace of mind, so he didn't have to worry about whether it would kill River, Kaylee and the others – but also for the need to just _know_ what was being denied to him.

A glance back to the common area revealed Zoe was quietly discussing something with Inara, and that her attention was partially distracted.

"River," he whispered. His sister, dormant as she was curled up in the corner of the Infirmary, stirred slightly when Simon mentioned her name. She glanced over at him with mildly inquisitive eyes, although she probably already knew what he was going to ask her.

As Zoe and Inara stood conversing, the first mate eyed River as she floated out of the Infirmary, though slightly too engaged in conversation to pay her any heed. She walked past the other two women and headed up the stairs towards the mess. Zoe turned back to Inara fully, now paying the Companion her full attention.

Unobserved, River wandered through the mess and then back down the opposite set of stairs into the cargo bay. She took in her surroundings for a moment, and then scampered down the stairs that led to the far end of the bay: namely the end that held the forbidden cargo container.

She bounded over to the crate, and then hesitated just as she reached the crate. She placed her hands just above its surface, waving them across it. She could feel the waves of coldness emanating from it, giving no clue to its contents. Her hand strayed towards the latch that would release the first seal…

"Hey now, girly," echoed a voice from not far behind her. "Don't wanna be doin' anything stupid now, get me?"

River continued her hand waving activities, passing over the latch in spite of the warning. "Silly. I wasn't going to open it."

Jayne stepped closer to her, gun at the ready – just in case. "C'mon, darlin'. Let's take you on the oddball family reunion." He gently took her arm, as to not provoke a violent reaction, and River allowed herself to be led away from the mysterious cargo container.

Zoe arched an eyebrow upon seeing River, and a glance into the Infirmary showed that Simon was pretending – badly – to be busying himself with some kind of diagnostic.

Jayne firmly planted River in the Infirmary, and Zoe didn't deem it fit to warn Simon to not try anything like it again – Jayne did it for her when he brushed 'accidentally' with Vera a little too close to Simon's leg, sweeping the fabric.

With Zoe returned to the common area and Jayne back in the cargo hold, Simon rushed eagerly to River so she could produce the hidden fruits of her labour – namely, the data from the portable scanner he had woven into the arm of River's sleeve.

"Did I do good?" asked River, vaguely earnest.

"You did great, River," congratulated Simon, and he hugged her gently. She was so strange these past few days; she seemed so…sedated. More than usual, anyway.

Simon loaded the information onto his lab computer and started to read through the data. River wandered over and looked at the numbers scrolling across the screen, as a cat would watch raindrops rolling down a window in a storm. Simon knew that she possessed a greater understanding of the screen than a cat did of how the water arrived at the window, but still…he added it to his growing list of slightly irregular behaviour in his sister. Not that that meant much where River was involved.

He started first of all by looking at the composition of the container, and found that it was a pretty standard compound mix of metal, plastic and other irregularities. What was more interesting was that inside it, there was another, much more sophisticated container that was using the standard one as camouflage. And more interesting yet was that this second, internal container possessed some kind of scanner scrambler, in that according to Simon's admittedly basic instrument, it was empty.

"Curioser and curioser," he muttered.

Why would someone pay to transport a disguised, empty container? Maybe someone was going to fill it at the opposite end of their journey, but that was unlikely, as they had been warned not to open the crate under any circumstances. No, Simon resigned himself to ignorance on getting a concrete reading on the contents; there was something in the crate, but he just couldn't get a scan of it. There were other ways he could get an indication of what might be in there.

The most obvious way was calibrating the weight of the two cargo crates, and then deducting it from the total mass of the package as it was. Considering how heavy it had been to lift, it wasn't difficult for Simon to see that whatever it was weighed quite a bit. Was it a person? Too heavy, and Simon couldn't make a worthy guess of what else might be in there.

Abandoning the weight strategy, Simon moved onto a gaseous analysis of the contents of the box. What he saw amazed him; a gas like none other he had ever seen. So strange it was that he couldn't begin to guess what kind of an effect it would have on a person if it were inhaled. It seemed similar in some ways to an anaesthetic gas, but in others it appeared to be more poisonous than cyanide.

As Simon was busying himself in the Infirmary, another puzzle was forming; however this one had a more immediate solution.

Up on the bridge, Mal picked up a blip on the radar; another ship was slowly gaining on them on an intercept course. He subtly changed their course a couple of times to assess whether or not they were really being followed, however the other vessel quickly proved that it was tailing them.

Unfortunately, it was also bigger and faster than Serenity.

He flipped on the intercom. "We've got company. Zoe, get up here. Jayne, keep an eye on the cargo."

Unbeknownst to Mal, Jayne was making faces and imitating his captain in the hold; _"Jayne, keep an eye on the cargo._ What the hell have I been _doing_ for the past four gorram hours?"

Zoe marched onto the bridge with a purpose, and Mal filled her in.

"Reavers?" she asked automatically.

"No, they've got containment. Maybe smugglers, but they'd try and keep out of the way."

"Bounty hunters?"

"Maybe," Mal nodded. "I think the good Doctor and his sister would still fetch a decent price on the market. Lil' River probably has some more Alliance secrets up in that big brain of hers they'd rather not get out like the last one."

"Too small to be Alliance," pondered Zoe, and at that moment the communications panel lit up. Mal gave her a look.

"I guess we're about to find out." He flicked the switch that would put through the transmission, and a familiar face showed up on the readout.

"Harvey," said Mal with no small degree of surprise. "Fancy seein' you all the way out here. What can I do you for?"

The Brown Coat's former squad mate didn't look particularly amiable. "Hi Mal. It'd be great if you could reduce speed, let us come on board and, well, I'll be honest, take some of your cargo. The reformed Independents have a certain…vested interest in what you're carrying, and we would like you to _donate_ it to the cause."

Mal considered that for approximately less than a second. "There's more of a snowball's chance in Hell as you setting foot on this bird."

Harvey smiled. "Predictable Mal. But you haven't thought it through, as usual. Shoot first, even if it's with your mouth. I'm in a faster ship, and I have guns mounted on mine. You have neither advantage."

"You want my cargo so bad, you won't fire on me."

"Wrong – I'll knock out your engines, your life support, wait for you all to suffocate and take it anyway."

"That happens, and I open the crate. I assume you know what we're carrying."

Harvey's face almost blanched. "You wouldn't."

"Between that and lettin' you win? I thought you knew me, Harvey." He flipped off the comms, and the screens went dark. He turned to face Zoe.

"Take the helm. Evade as long as you can, and you call me when they get too close."

He rose from his seat and went to leave.

"Where you going, sir?"

"To figure out what's in that crate."

"I can't say how strongly that's a bad idea," said Simon vehemently, and Mal practically had to step back in the face of the force of the Doctor's words.

"Woah, what happened between now and a few hours ago?"

Simon looked away, vaguely sheepish, but it was River who gave him away.

"Take the readings, bring them back. So cold…the butcher told me to wrap up warm."

"I see. Well, maybe not about that last part. But I see."

"I couldn't help it, Mal. It was a threat to us all."

"Well, now it might be the thing that saves us from being blown to itty pieces. What did you find?"

"There were several unusual properties present in the container. Essentially, the most conclusive readings I obtained were of the gas present in the inner container…"

"Doctor," Mal interrupted. "Just the basics, if you please."

"Oh – yes, sorry. Best guess, it's some kind of airborne virus being transported by some kind of medium such as frozen meat."

"So it is a weapon."

"I can't say what it _is_ or _isn't_ with any authority. But based on what I know…yes."

"There's one way to find out for sure," said Jayne, and Mal nodded slowly. Simon looked at them with dawning, horrified comprehension.

"No. You can't open it. I forbid it."

Anger flashed through Mal's eyes. "What did you say?"

Simon realised his mistake, but refused to back down. "If you open that crate, we will be dead within hours."

"So we drag it into the airlock, suit up and take a peek," shrugged Jayne.

"An unusually good idea, Jayne," said Mal.

"Not even that would guarantee your safety. I have no idea what that gas is, let alone how it would react to plastics, metals; I don't even know for sure what the inner crate is made of, so it could react harmlessly with the environment, or for all I know it could eat through your visors in seconds."

"In a vacuum?"

Simon looked exasperated. "Yes, Jayne. Being in a vacuum doesn't ensure safety against corrosive elements, it just means when something _does_ hit your suit you suffocate."

"Tell me Doctor, what does a surgeon know about airborne toxins?"

"Enough to know that opening that crate is a very bad idea."

Mal pursed his lips, and then wandered out of the Infirmary. Jayne followed him.

"So are we openin' it?" asked the rough and ready mercenary.

"…No. We'll use that as Plan B."

"So what's Plan A?"

"I'm still workin' on that."

"Well I'd come up with somethin' fast, cause I doubt your guy will stick around until you've thought somethin' up."

"_Cap'n, we're being raised again."_

Mal ran to the bridge.

There, he met with Harvey's grim face.

"Oh, you again," he greeted. "Don't you have anythin' better to do?"

"Stop it, Mal. I want to make a deal with you, because I don't want to blow you and Zoe up, so I'd work with the situation instead of trying to worm your way out of it."

Mal exchanged a glance with Zoe, who just shrugged. "I'm listening," he said.

"It's simple. You give me that crate, and I let you go unharmed. You know my methods, Mal. You know how far I'll go to get what I want, and you know that my ship is pointing big guns at you right now. The decision's yours."

"Why do you want the crate so much?"

"Why do you think? For what's inside. I doubt they told you what it is, but it could revolutionise our war against the Alliance."

"Y'see, this is why I said no to you. Every time someone's had the bright idea of resurrecting the Independents, they blow up coffee shops, gas children or one of a hundred other ways not to do business. Yes, I killed men in the war, probably some women too. But I did it on the field, and I did it when they had a gun in their hand."

Harvey snorted derisively. "Don't talk to me about sensibilities in war. We all did questionable things, Mal. I'm not going to have this conversation with you, so you can stall by goading me into a righteous fit of anger. Tell me right now, yes or no, do we have an understanding?"

Mal stared for a few seconds, and then nodded stiffly.

"Good. Wise decision. Oh, and Mal? Try anything, and I shoot you."

"Got it. And for the record, I wasn't stalling."

The monitor went dead again, leaving Mal steaming. Zoe cast him a sympathetic eye.

"You did the right thing, Captain."

"No Zoe…I did the only thing, and sometimes they ain't the same."

He stomped off the bridge and made preparations to receive guests.

He ordered everyone except Jayne and Zoe into the passenger dorm and instructed them to shoot anyone coming through before they heard the other ship depart. That done, the trio waited in front of the main airlock which opened shortly after the aggressor ship clunked into place.

The door swung open, and Harvey, accompanied by a gang of little more than thugs, strutted onto Mal's ship.

"Evenin'," said Harvey.

"Just take it and leave," Mal almost spat. Harvey nodded to his subordinates and a group of them carefully hoisted their lone cargo into the air, and then off the ship. Harvey smiled.

"See? That was easy, wasn't it?"

"We got nothin' to say to one another once this is done," said Mal, and it was clear that Zoe felt the same way.

"That's a shame, Mal. After all we've been through. By the way, I'm gonna have to alter our agreement slightly. Don't panic; I'm just gonna hit you with an EMP blast after we leave, just so you don't get any ideas about chasing us down for vengeance. Which I know you'll have in mind, Mal."

"Fine. Like there's anything we can do about it. So that's what you were doing on Taurus? Scoutin' our outfit, lookin' for a weak spot?"

Harvey shook his head. "Nah. True, I was there chasing that crate, but I didn't know it'd be you guys transportin' it. That thing is a hot potato, it's been changing hands for weeks."

"Why? What's in there?"

He chuckled. "I got no idea. It's hot enough that no one wants to be caught handling it, but everyone wants it. By now it's impossible to find out where it came from first, but I know where it was going to end up, so I guess we either sell it to them or use it ourselves. All I got told was it might be a weapon, and not to open it under any circumstances."

"So _someone_ knows what's in it."

"Hell, Mal, I'm sure God knows, but he ain't squeakin'."

"You're tellin' me _no-one_ knows what's in that crate?"

"No-one I know, anyhow."

"Yet you know it's a weapon."

"I don't _know,_ what I got told was that it's _probably_ a weapon. What do I care?"

"Exactly…" said Zoe. "What do you care?"

Harvey shrugged and spread his hands. "What can I say?"

"Goodbye."

He waved at the assembled group opposite him. "Anyone else Mal, and you'd be a floating hunk of scrap. I hope you know how…"

"_Get off my ship."_

Harvey smirked, turned and withdrew. The cargo door slammed behind him, and moments later the ship clunked again, departing this time. A run to the bridge revealed that it was moving away, and hadn't so much as aimed its weapons at Serenity.

"At least he was true to his word," muttered Zoe, and Mal grimaced, taking little consolation in her words.

"We're gonna have a tough time explainin' this on Beaumonde."

The EMP cannon swivelled suddenly and fired at the smaller ship, the deck rocking slightly beneath their feet. The electronic equipment blinked and died around them, and they were plunged into almost perfect darkness.

Mal sighed. "I'll go get Kaylee. Zoe? Go and find those candles."

Over on Harvey's ship, the captain ordered a course for the nearest home base, and instructed his crew, much in the same way Mal had done, that they should not under any circumstances open the crate that was now stowed in the cargo hold. Some were mildly curious, but Harvey's rule over them was almost as absolute as Mal's, so other than a few minor exceptions, no one cast so much as an inquisitive eye on the crate.

Which, ultimately, was what betrayed them. So invisible had the crate become that no-one heard the minor whirring inside it, nor saw the lights blinking along the side, nor the lip of the crate popping open, until it was too late.

Pale, almost colourless gas emerged from the open container, reaching malevolently towards human lungs that would inhale it.

Six hours later, every person on the ship was as good as dead.

_**Next on Void**_

"_**Uh…gimme a few more hours."**_

_Thanks to Tyramir, billmovementforever and BlueEyedBrigadier for your reviews and feedback. I hope you like it as much as the story progresses :)_


	5. Adrift

"How's my girl?"

"Oh I'm shiny, cap'n. Oh wait, you didn't mean me," she said, giving him a teasing glance, and then realised Mal clearly wasn't in the mood. "Uh…gimme a few more hours."

"Good work, Kaylee."

Mal stalked out of the engine room, still stewing over the situation. He passed through the mess and tripped on something that lay unseen in the darkness that the flickering candles around him endeavoured to, but fell sadly short, of fully illuminating.

"Might wanna watch that," said Jayne around a cigar. Mal sneered at him, for once unable to think of a snappy comeback.

"Well maybe you should…watch…yourself," he managed, and Jayne shot him a quizzical look.

"You feelin' alright, Mal?"

"No, I'm cold, dark and hungry. One of my old war buddies just stole my cargo, and we ain't gonna get paid. I want my ship back."

"You just wanna be glad the aux life support kicked in – not like last time."

"I am glad. My pissed off outweighs it, though."

"How long should we be here?" asked Simon softly.

"Kaylee says another couple of hours."

Jayne grinned around the stub smouldering in between his teeth. "Plenty of time to finish our game."

He referred to the poker game Mal had walked in on that consisted of Jayne, Simon and Zoe.

Serenity's captain grunted, and passed them to pace the bridge, having nothing better to do. As he mounted the stairs, he called back over his shoulder.

"Doctor – Jayne raises his eyebrows when he's bluffin'."

"What? Mal! No, I don't!" cried Jayne, and then forced his eyebrows down into a scowl. Zoe just smirked slightly, shaking her head.

"Shall we continue?" she suggested, and took up the deck, shuffling them.

"I _don't_ raise my eyebrows," insisted Jayne, realising he couldn't sustain the expression indefinitely. Simon just nodded nervous acquiescence, and Jayne seemed to forget about it.

She dealt everyone around the table two cards while Jayne and Simon tossed in their chips. After inspecting her own cards, Zoe matched Simon's blind, and Jayne flipped another chip into the middle of the table. Zoe burned one card, and dealt three other face up in front of the chips: The King of Spades, the Nine of Hearts and the Three of Clubs. The trio eyed their cards speculatively, and then returned them to the table.

"I didn't understand an EMP blast could be so disruptive," commented Simon. "I knew that you could disable a ship temporarily, but not for this long."

"Ten," said Jayne, and placed a corresponding number of chips in the pot. "Depends how good the hit is, Doc. We were a sittin' duck when Harvey's guys blasted us." Simon met Jayne's ten. "It could've been the cannons – I ain't complainin'. Much."

"They're likely to have the best equipment; I hear an Alliance factory 'misplaced' a few shipments," said Zoe, throwing her chips and then placing another card; this time, the Four of Hearts.

"I didn't realise anti-Alliance sentiment was so strong," muttered Simon.

"You kiddin'? After the show we put on?"

The hand went around their small circle, the chips falling into the pot. Zoe turned the final card over, the Queen of Diamonds.

Studying his cards, Jayne made an almost throwaway comment. "I expect our point of delivery man's not gonna be very happy when we get to Beaumonde. Twenty."

"I expect that's so," said Zoe, not rising to the bait.

"I see your twenty, and raise you…ten," said Simon.

"Besides, what are they going to do about it? Fifty."

Met with the ominous clatter of Zoe's chips hitting the pile, Jayne took one last look at his cards, scowled, and threw them on the table. "I fold. It ain't what they say I'm worried about, it's what they'll shoot. At _us._"

"Well, then we just shoot 'em back. Doctor?"

After a long moment's thought, Simon picked up a pile of chips. "I see your fifty, and raise you another fifty."

Jayne whistled, sounding hollow against the silence that now ached around them. "That's a mighty big bet, Doc. You got the goods to back it up?"

Simon shifted on his chair minutely. "Yes. Unlike us on this cargo run."

While Jayne guffawed, Zoe's eyes narrowed. "What happened to us wasn't our fault. The Cap'n'll explain that to the good folks on Beaumonde. All in."

Simon met the edge in Zoe's voice. "I didn't mean any _disrespect,_" he said as he pushed his entire pile of chips into the pot, emphasising the word with the action. "I simply meant that our contact is expecting a cargo container when we arrive, and we have no cargo container."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Zoe; the final word on the matter. "Let's see 'em."

Simon placed his cards on the table, revealing the King of Diamonds and the King of Hearts. "Three of a kind," he stated neutrally.

Jayne let loose a hearty chuckle, leaning towards Zoe, who remained unperturbed. She revealed her own cards; the Ten of Spades and the Jack of Hearts. "A straight," she said as Simon winced.

"Unlucky, Doc!" crowed Jayne, and Simon stood from the table. He nodded at both of them.

"An enjoyable game – thank you."

"Don't mention it," said Zoe, an equally graceful winner as Simon was a loser. "And Doctor?" Simon turned from the engine room doorway to address her. "Jayne raises his eyebrows, but you squint."

Thanks," he nodded. "I'll bear it in mind."

"I do _not_ raise my eyebrows," he caught as he walked down the stairs to the infirmary.

Stepping inside his territory, he was startled to see a cloaked figure rummaging through his supplies.

"Uhm…" he said, and the figure jumped around, startled.

"Oh!" cried Inara, and then realised who she was talking to. One hand went to her chest, and she let out a relieved breath. "I'm sorry, you startled me," she said.

"I'm sorry," stammered Simon, "I just didn't…uh…expect to find anyone down here…can I help you with something?"

Inara looked a little sheepish, and placed what she had ferreted from the stores on the worktable next to her. "I get a little…claustrophobic sometimes, and we've been sat here like this for I don't know how long, and…"

"It's around fifty hours," said Simon. "And you don't have to worry. I can see why being trapped aboard any ship would cause feelings of anxiety to surface. I'll prepare something for your nerves now, if you'd like to take a seat?" He patted the central bed reassuringly, and the Companion did as he asked.

"How did your game end?" she enquired.

"I lost," informed Simon, sounding just a little disappointed. "Kaylee and Mal were too busy to join us, and Zoe said she tried to find you, but…"

"I was meditating."

"Ah." He produced a syringe from a drawer, and then started to mix several chemical together in a small jar.

"Didn't River play with you?"

"Yes, but unfortunately her attention span wasn't up to it. We managed five minutes before she started losing track of the game. She spent a few minutes ripping up food packages singing that rhyme she's so fond of, and then I put her to bed. I suspect the others weren't too keen on playing poker with a psychic, so it was just as well."

"Could she do that? Read their cards with her mind?"

Simon shrugged minutely. "To be honest, I'm not sure _what_ she could do."

As he drew a level of the fluid into the syringe and flicked the air bubble from inside it, Inara looked pensive. "Maybe I could help you with her in the respect. Part of my training included a degree of mental exercise and discipline. Perhaps I could teach River to meditate?"

"That might be a good idea." He injected the substance into Inara, and she almost immediately seemed more tranquil.

She released a breath of air, smiled. "That thing works _fast!"_ she said, and Simon smiled.

"It's quite a potent mix. It should last until we power up and leave, which Mal tells me is soon."

"Good. I'm tired of just sitting around here."

"As am I."

Inara went to leave the infirmary, but stopped before she did so. "I hope you don't take offence at what I'm about to say, but…try and avoid the engine room?" Simon looked up, quizzical. "The repair of the ship rests solely on Kaylee's shoulders and if you were to show up there, well…it might add quite some time to our repairs being completed."

Simon blushed slightly and nodded, and Inara took her leave of the infirmary.

Some time later, Jayne and Zoe were at a critical point of their game when the ship gave a mechanical shudder. They both broke from their match, a hopeful gleam in their eye, and it was rewarded when the lights started to hum and flicker to life around them, and a triumphant scream bellowed from the engine room.

"That's my girl, Kaylee!" cried Mal from another part of the ship, and the crew abandoned whatever it was they were doing and rushed to the engine room. There, they found a beaming, though very grubby Kaylee, hands on hips in triumph.

"Best engineer in the 'verse," enthused Mal, who roughly embraced her as he entered the engine room.

"It's a gift," said Kaylee as Serenity continued to power up, removing the horrible silence that had filled the ship until now.

"Whatever it is, I'm mighty glad you're with us," said Zoe, and the assembled crowd nodded enthusiastically.

The ship's engineer turned to address her captain. "Give her ten more minutes to warm up, and then we can head on out."

"Yeah," said Mal, some of the cheer fading from his expression. "I wonder what our man will have to say when he hears we've arrived."

"Who?"

"_Captain Reynolds of the Serenity, sir. He says he has a delivery to make."_

"Oh, Captain _Reynolds,_ uhm…well, uh...send him in, I suppose."

The door to the office whirred open and Mal, Jayne and Zoe were escorted inside by several inhospitable men who carried the title 'guard', to be met with their point of delivery man sat behind a desk.

"'Who?'" asked Mal, and the man held up his hands.

"Captain Reynolds, allow me to apologise. It's just that we, uh…" He exchanged a look with one of the guards, but didn't receive any help. "Didn't expect you so soon."

Mal's eyes widened slightly, but he nodded. "Yeah, that might explain it." He checked his watch, muttering under his breath. "Zoe, we came forward three, back two and forward one, right?" She nodded. "So we'd be, uh…carry the five…" he abandoned the show. "_Two days late."_

"Two days…? Ah yes, well, there was something wrong with the journey then, I take it?" He was starting to sweat, and was growing more nervous as time went on.

"Could say that. I'm surprised you're not angrier, seein' as how we were carefully instructed to be here on time and all."

"Uh…"

"Unless you weren't expectin' us to turn up at all."

The man flushed beet red, and made some kind of stuttering attempt to explain the situation. Mal's eyes widened fully this time.

"Well, hell, I was just foolin' around. You didn't think we'd just run off with your cargo crate, did you?"

"No! No, nothing like that," said the man, regaining his composure. "We were just concerned when your deadline passed. You'll have to forgive me, I'm a busy man, and I deal with a lot of shipments. It just took me a moment to realise fully who you were."

"No problem," allowed Mal, exchanging a confused look with Zoe. Jayne just glowered.

"Now, I suppose we can allow the tardiness, due to…?"

"Well, that's somethin' you haven't asked yet – whether or not we _have_ the crate."

"But…but you just said…"

"I said we were _late,_ not that we had the shipment. The new Independents hijacked our ship, and took the cargo container. They were very interested in what was inside, and as for the reason we're late, well, they hit us with an EMP blast and we've been dead in space for over two days. So, deepest apologies, but we were robbed; plain and simple."

Their contact paled and quivered in his seat, moving his mouth illegibly, making muted strangling noises. "You…_lost_…the crate?"

Mal nodded again. "'fraid so. We'll return the money we owe you to make up for the loss, but there wasn't anythin' we could do about it."

"Where is it now?"

"That's what I keep tryin' to say, and you…uh, seem to be having trouble catchin' on. It was taken. We've been dead in space for two days." After a pause; "We don't know."

"Oh my God…" muttered the man, over and over again. Mal and Zoe exchanged another look, and Jayne's hand edged closer to his weapon. Suddenly, the man behind the desk stood and left the room, leaving the confused trio with puzzled expressions.

Unseen to the crew of the Serenity, the man sat behind a cortex terminal in the next room and pressed a few buttons frantically.

After it rang for a very long time, a burst of static finally answered.

"_Are you deficient?"_ The voice was scrambled, and sounded robotic.

"What…?"

"_This had better be damned important. I told you to never raise me on this line."_

"It's, uh…it's important. The ah…the crate is missing."

A few very long moments of hissing interference were at first the only reward to the man's statement, but the voice answered him eventually.

"_Where is it?"_

"They don't know. They're supposed to be dead."

"_Did the container automatically open as planned?"_

"It must have been taken before it did. It must have killed the other ship's crew."

"_Find that ship. Everything could fall apart if it goes public."_

"But where do I…?" A small thud reached the man's ears.

"_What was that?"_

"I'm holding them in the next room. They must be getting impatient."

"_Are you deficient?"_ repeated the voice. _"You should have killed them the moment they stepped inside. Get back out there and finish the job."_

The man nodded. "I'll do it right –"

Abruptly, the door to the office burst open, and right in front of Mal was his gun arm. He shot the man in the chest, blasting him from the chair. He holstered his pistol, straightened his coat and took the seat in front of the cortex.

"Next time you might wanna hire a man who can keep his voice down," he spoke to the monitor. "That, or they got real thin walls here." The almost mute sound of hissing static was the only thing to respond. And after a brief moment of seeming intelligent silence, the screen went blank.

"Somethin' very strange is goin' on," said Mal, who then stood from the cortex. "Zoe!"

"Sir?"

"Wire up this dead gentleman's terminal to Serenity's computer. I'd like to find out who'd have us killed."

"Right away sir," she said, picking her way over the unconscious guards.

"Jayne – game face." Jayne grinned as the sound of slapping feet reached his ears.

Back on Serenity, Kaylee sat slouched in the pilot's seat when Zoe's signal beeped on the monitor. She flipped a switch and the first mate's voice floated onto the bridge.

"Kaylee! I need you to set up a data entry point for me to upload somethin' to."

"Why? Did things go south?"

Gunshots assailed her ears, followed by Mal shouting: "Time is a factor, Kaylee!" Snapping into gear, she worked a console on the opposite station, doing what was necessary of her.

After a few seconds, she called to Zoe, "Go!" Almost immediately, the computer flooded with new information, and Kaylee grinned with satisfaction; a job well done.

In the office, the final grunt hit the carpet and Mal, Zoe and Jayne headed up the corridor. "Get her ready, Kaylee. We want to leave. _Now_."

Five short minutes later, the crew were safely back on board Serenity, and the ship blasted away from Beaumonde as if the entire Alliance navy were after it.

Which, for all they knew, it could be.

_**Next on Void**_

"_**Everywhere I go, you can see, but no-one else can see it, nobody ever sees it."**_

_Thanks to Tyramir and BlueEyedBrigadier for your reviews!_


	6. Insurrection

"Give me news," said Mal, marching onto the bridge. 

"The job was put out by a big corporation," said Simon, who was poring over a monitor displaying the data they lifted from their previous employer's computer systems.

"Which one?" asked Inara, but Mal waved her off.

"Doesn't matter. They're all the same. Besides, it's probably just a shell corporation of an even bigger corporation." He looked at Simon to confirm, and after a few moments the Doctor looked up, almost surprised.

"Mal's right. It's a dummy front set up by Blue Sun."

River whimpered over in the corner, but she went unobserved. Mal frowned, but Inara beat him to the punch.

"Why is a food company involved with all this? I'm guessing we weren't transporting a crate of beans for them."

Simon shook his head. "Blue Sun is a lot more prominent than people think. They're involved in some medical research I once undertook, and they produce a lot of the medical diagnostic software the Alliance uses. That's as far as my knowledge extends, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are involved in a lot more sectors of the 'verse than that."

"Stop it!" screamed River suddenly, and everyone assembled on the bridge jumped to some degree and turned to observe her. Simon was up in seconds, moving to his sister's side. "I don't want to hear it anymore!"

"River…it's okay," said Simon, trying to hold her, but she kept squirming away.

"Everywhere I go, you can see, but no-one else can see it, nobody ever sees it." She started to sob quietly, finally succumbing to Simon. The doctor looked to Mal for some kind of response.

"Maybe you should take your sister down back for a while, let her rest her head," he said softly. "It's been a long week for everyone."

Simon nodded agreement, and took his sister aft. Inara took the doctor's place at the computer screen.

"Blue Sun went to a great deal of trouble to remain anonymous here. I didn't realise Simon was so adept at computers – the file tracing Blue Sun was quite heavily encrypted. Also, it had been deleted."

"I imagine our doctor knows quite a bit we don't know about," said Mal pensively. "Same as how a Companion learned to recognise computer encryption."

Inara's eyebrow arched. "It was part of my training at the Academy, Mal."

"I wasn't lookin' to fight," said Mal neutrally. "Just pointin' out we all have things we hide from each other."

"Even you?"

"Especially me. It's what fuels the mysterious air I put out."

"Right." She returned to analysing the screen. "It doesn't say what's in the crate. Just that Blue Sun put the order out to transport the crate. Also, the job before that we did."

"We?" Inara looked up at him, confused. Mal smiled and continued. "I remember a time when you wouldn't be seen dead bein' associated with us. Now, it's 'we'."

"I would have been dead, the same as all of you, if that crate hadn't been taken. I'm as part of this as all of you; I'm not going to take it lying down."

Mal nodded approvingly. "Good to hear it. And it doesn't surprise me, them putting out the order before. It was an almost too easy job, leadin' right into another almost too easy job. They rope a crew in with the first job, and on the second, they open that crate and whatever's inside kills everyone on the ship. When it reaches the Core, they can 'pick up' a distress call and claim the ship as salvage. No witnesses. I knew somethin' was up with that machine shop we went to. Everythin' was laid out wrong, like a high up official watched a movie of a machine shop, and set it up like that. I should've looked into it more."

"Don't beat yourself up about it. What about the dummy businesses set up to give and receive the cargo?"

"They'll be gone within a week. All the staff paid up to forget about ever seein' us. Either that or it's a genuine business, in which case they bribe the staff or they deal with so many deliveries we just get forgotten about; just another piece of mislaid paperwork."

"Except we got held up."

"Exactly. Which is our only advantage here."

"So how do we play it?"

"Easy. We find that ship."

"How do we do that?"

"Y'heard what Harvey said back on Taurus. Somethin' about whatever's about to go down bein' too big to miss. Well, let's see if he's right."

He flicked a switch next to the computer screen, and the readout changed to a news feed, which was in the middle of a report.

_"- chaos that has descended upon Hera where the local population has overthrown the rightful Alliance seat of power and installed their own puppet government. The insurrectionists are claiming the planet in the name of the new Independents, however Alliance reports show that this group are little more than terrorists. Any ship trying to enter orbit of Hera is advised that it is a war zone, with fighting expected to last for up to days. An Alliance source said that the ill-fated rebellion will be crushed within a week, and continued to express his dista -"_

"Can you tell which side is paying the station to broadcast?" asked Mal wryly.

"How do you _do_ that?" demanded Inara. But Mal just shrugged coyly.

"Told ya – my mysterious air. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. I'm guessing Harvey was headin' to Hera, so that's where we're goin'." He moved to the intercom, and squeezed the button on the side to address the ship. "Buckle up, happy campers. We're goin' to war."

"War? I don't wanna go to war."

"Don't panic, Jayne. I'm sure the cap'n didn't mean an _actual_ war. Uhm…right, cap'n?"

Mal smiled slightly at Kaylee in an attempt to be reassuring. "Well actually Kaylee, I did. But the good news is, we don't want to get involved. Just sorta…sneak past."

"How are you gonna 'sneak past' a war zone?" asked Jayne.

"Just the way we did back in the old days. Tell 'em, Zoe."

"Speak softly. Carry a big gun," informed Zoe.

"A big gun? Shall we go through the part about us not having a big gun again?" challenged Jayne.

"Well, we'll just speak extra softly," said Mal.

"This is a bad idea."

"Look. The only way we're gonna find out what was in that crate is if we go find it, and chances are, it's on Hera. So we go to Hera. No matter if there's a war raging between it and us, we'll get through it. Same as we always do."

"How in the hell did an entire _planet_ get up and revolt against the Alliance?" asked Jayne, his face all rolled up in disgust. "And not just a backwater pile of dirt on the fringe, a near enough Core world?"

"I guess Mr Universe was right – you can't stop the signal. Besides, anti-Alliance sentiment has always been strong on Hera after the end of the war," stated Mal.

Simon decided to input into the conversation. "As I understand it, a lot of Independent veterans stayed on Hera after the…uh…after the battle there," he said, stealing an apprehensive glance at Mal, who betrayed no emotion discussing the planet on which he and Zoe were the only ones of their battalion to survive the vicious battle of Serenity Valley.

"So…" said Kaylee slowly. "Just to make sure…we ain't actually _goin'_ to war, just kinda…_visiting_ one."

"Uh…yeah, I guess."

"Shiny," she said. "Just make sure they don't shoot at us."

"I'll put in a request."

"This is a bad idea," reiterated Jayne, but said no more. After that, there were no more objections louder than a grumble, so the crew disbanded from the mess and back to their respective areas of the ship. Mal caught Simon on his way out.

"Doctor. I'm surprised to not hear an objection from you."

"I'm sure you heard about my exploits back on the cargo run. I'm just as keen as anyone to find out what's in the crate."

"That's what I thought you'd say. Thing is, I don't see you riskin' taking River into a war zone for somethin' as trivial as curiosity."

Simon's jaw worked, and then he replied. "I'm worried about River."

"What's new?"

"I mean, more than usual. Her behaviour has been…odd, lately. More than usual," he repeated.

"Is she gonna start…?"

"No. I don't think so. I'll put her to sleep before that. I think that maybe something in that container is affecting her, and I need to find out what it is."

"She starts goin' all warrior-commando again…" said Mal, and Simon sighed in mild exasperation.

"I'll take care of it," he said, and Mal let him go.

"Well then," he muttered walking onto the bridge. Zoe turned to look at him. "Next stop, the past." They exchanged a sombre look, and then Mal took the helm.

"It doesn't look much different, sir," said Zoe, and Mal could just nod in silent agreement. The planet Hera filled the main view port. Light shone from a few missile impacts in high orbit, but the combat wasn't as heavy as they'd been expecting. That meant one side was winning over the other, and depending on who won, it might make Mal's day a lot harder. He started scanning the comms, trying to pick up brief snatches of conversation.

The transmissions were mostly coded military, and either came through as controlled static or people who spoke entirely in code words, but a couple of civilian transmissions indicated that the Independents had come out on top.

"Looks like they finally…" started Jayne.

"Don't finish that sentence," snapped Zoe, and the intensity of her words forced the bigger man to silence.

"Looks like we missed all the fun," said Kaylee. "And by fun, I mean lots of explosions and death."

"Sounds like fun to me," said Jayne, but the engineer ignored him.

"Where's the central command post?" asked Zoe.

Mal glanced over at her, his face unreadable. "I'll give you three guesses. But you'll only need one."

Having received clearance to land, the Firefly class transport set down on the charred ground of Serenity Valley. Its cargo ramp slowly lowered, and the group of the slightly dishevelled crew wandered down it, blinking in the bright afternoon sun.

Mal spotted several landmarks that were immediately recognisable to him, but in the current weather they appeared different…almost cheerful. He could see the ridge where he and Zoe had been found and captured in, and he had to make a conscious effort to not think about the past. This was a business venture, and he had come here to do that business and no more; certainly not to dredge up years of almost repressed grief of the memory of his platoon. And if he told himself that for long enough, it might actually work.

A group of Independent soldiers came to greet them, one sweeping Mal into a bear hug, chortling noisily.

"Mal!" he crowed, the object of his affection grimacing slightly with the force of the gesture. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Same thing as always, Jacob. Tryin' to stay one step ahead of trouble."

"Well you came to the wrong place if you're lookin' to stay out of trouble." He released Mal and noticed his soldiers standing with their weapons half drawn. "Don't stand there like they're the enemy," he barked. "This is Malcolm Reynolds! He fought in this Valley when you were all daydreaming teenagers!"

The soldiers immediately snapped to attention and rattled off a salute towards Mal. "It's an honour, sir!" the most senior trooper barked, and Mal returned the salute.

He turned to the others. "This is somethin' a guy could get used to," he grinned.

"Well aren't you goin' to introduce me?"

"Of course!" He pointed out each of his crew as he spoke their name. "Jacob, this is Kaylee, my shiny engineer; Jayne, my…uh…accounts manager; Simon, my medic; and this is Inara, who ain't part of the crew per se, but travels along for the ride. She's the ship whore."

Inara steeled visibly. "I'm a registered Companion," she said, smiling at Jacob through her teeth.

"Nice crew you have assembled here. Is Zoe…?"

"She's back on board the ship. She's had some…personal grief recently. I don't think she wanted to dredge up even more by steppin' out here."

"I see. I'm glad she's still with you."

"Me too."

"Well don't just stand there! You're guests of the new Independents. I more than owe you a drink for what happened on Du Khang."

"Wait. That was _you_?"

Jacob chortled heartily, and Kaylee looked confused. "What happened on Du Khang?"

"It's a long story. I'll tell you some other time."

"Well…okay. What's there to do here anyhow?"

Jacob's eyebrows shot up. "You've never been to Hera before?" Upon Kaylee shaking her head, he elaborated. "This here's the command centre for the Independents, but on either side of the Valley there's a small town where you can chow down or drink up. I think there's a few shops, but they're only small, so I wouldn't expect much of them. It's a half hour walk followin' the road, or if you can convince any troopers headin' out that way to give you a ride, it'll take you ten minutes."

The engineer nodded and smiled winningly at Jacob, before turning to address Mal. "If we're gonna be here for a while, I could head into town and buy a few things we need. Like…food."

"I don't see why not. You takin' the mule?"

"Naw, I don't see why, it's a nice day for a stroll."

"Alright then. I'll give you a buzz when we're ready to get goin'." He turned to walk away with Jacob, but Kaylee wasn't finished.

"Uhm…maybe Simon could come with me, because, uhm…we might need medical supplies, and I wouldn't know what to buy." She smiled innocently as Mal's eyebrow arched in wry amusement.

"Yeah, why not? We could all do with a couple of hours off. Just make sure you're all back here by sundown."

"Aye, sir!" exclaimed Kaylee excitedly. She grabbed Simon by the arm, and dragged the surprised doctor off down the path that led to the bigger road before Mal could change his mind.

"Look after…!" he called, and Inara waved him off.

"I will!"

Mal turned to Inara. "You'll what now?"

"I'll be staying on the ship. I want to try and help River with something, and now seems like a good time to do it."

"Okay. Jayne?"

"Hell, why'd you even need to ask, Mal?"

"Right. You're coming with us for the booze. Inara, let Zoe know where we all kinda are. We'll be back in a couple of hours."

The Companion nodded and withdrew to the ship, while the three men wandered off in the opposite direction to where Kaylee and Simon had just fled.

"Wouldn't expect for there to be a bar set up around here," said Mal, and Jacob nodded agreement.

"The nearest bar is in that town young Kaylee headed towards. What we'll be drinking is my own private supply. That necklace your engineer was wearing looks quite nice; expensive, too. Where'd she get it?"

"That's kinda why we're here. The trouble I mentioned started with the job we took, haulin' those necklaces to Aries. The job after that, we were waylaid by another ship who took a crate from us."

"Yeah, it was gang of -" started Jayne, but Mal shot him a look that stopped him in mid-sentence. "Uh…smugglers."

Mal continued. "Thing is, that crate opened, and we hear what's inside will kill anyone who goes near it. We were meant to die, and we're tryin' to figure out exactly why."

Jacob frowned, tapping something into a personal datapad. "Sounds unfortunate. So why'd you end up here?"

"We think the ship that robbed us was headin' here with the crate. Wondered if you'd heard anythin' about that."

Jacob pondered, but shook his head. "No, nothing like that. But they wouldn't exactly announce it to us if they arrived. I'll get on the cortex once we're in my cabin."

"Thanks. So tell me, how'd you manage to rustle up an army and then occupy a near-Core world?"

"Easier than you'd think, Mal. The local population has been a great help, and we were always floating around in the background, gathering people and ships and weapons. The tables turned when an Alliance cruiser defected to our side, which gave us the local air superiority here in orbit. The ground forces have been diminished here, so they weren't much of a threat. Since we revolted, the planet's been a beacon for disgruntled citizens like you and me and we've opened the gates to them. I hear there's an Alliance fleet underway, but we have high hopes." They approached a series of small huts that must house the officers of the Independent complex. "Ah, here we are. You should join up, Mal. You'd enter in right at officer level. We need good men like you."

Mal shook his head as they entered the cabin. "I've been here and done this. I don't need those days of glory huntin' anymore. Besides, things ain't the way they used to be. We lost, Jacob."

"But we're going to win," said his old compatriot, waggling his eyebrows. Mal just smirked. "Now, if you'll give me a minute, I'll hop on the cortex to check out your smuggler ship, and then we can do some serious drinking."

"Thanks again."

Jacob fired up the monitor in the corner of the room, and before long a fresh faced soldier answered.

"Sir?"

"I need you to check something for me. My friend was attacked by a smuggler ship on his way to Beaumonde – they took their shipment, which was just one crate. Apparently it's very dangerous, and my friend has reason to believe they headed here. I need you to scan the recent records and see if anything's flagged."

"How recent?" Jacob turned to Mal.

"Within three days," was the reply, and the soldier on the other end of the cortex started working a console.

"What ship class?"

"It was a modified Envoy."

A few more moments of silence. "Nothing like that is showing up, sir. Of course, it's possible it slipped through in the confusion with all the fighting going on."

"Very good. Out," said Jacob, and deactivated the screen. He rubbed his hands together. "Now, let's get some serious dri -"

He was cut off mid-sentence as Mal slugged him, crashing him into a display unit holding some personal items. Jayne reacted badly.

"Mal, what the hell are you doin'?"

"Watch the door," snapped Mal, and Jayne went to the window, keenly watching the exterior but cursing to himself under his breath.

"Mal, have you lost your -" Jacob cried, cut off again by Mal's fist.

"Shut up. I didn't want to believe it, but you're lying to me, Jacob."

"I don't know what you mean!"

"I suspected all along that you might be hiding Harvey and his ship, but I never knew for sure until now."

"You're crazy!"

"I never told you where we were heading with the second shipment."

Jacob stopped, scanning his conversation over the cortex, and cross-checking it with the previous conversation with Mal. Finally he slumped in defeat.

"You never were the sharpest tool in the shop, Jacob." Mal punched him again, seemingly just for the hell of it. "Now, where are you keeping him?"

"Mal, I didn't want it to come to this. We're old buds, right? _Why_ did you have to take that job? You could've avoided all of this…"

"I ain't gonna ask again, and the reason I ain't shot you yet is cause I owe you from way back when. I'm gettin' pissed off with running into old buddies and then gettin' stabbed in the back by them. I'm not gonna ask again."

Jacob looked as though he was going to burst into tears. "Mal, I'm sorry…"

Mal took in the pleading face of his old buddy, and then shot him in the leg. Jacob cried out in pain, but Mal smothered his mouth to keep the noise down.

"And the gunshot won't attract anyone's attention?" hissed Jayne from the window, but Mal ignored him. A stray gunshot here and there wasn't uncommon at a place like this. Bored, drunk soldiers who had guns usually wound up using them. He leaned in very close to Jacob's face.

"Now we're past the old buddy stage," he said quietly, dangerously. "And I'm feelin' a little twitchy bein' back on this rock, so you start talkin', or I start doin' things that you will regret."

"Okay, okay," sobbed Jacob, tears now openly streaming down his face. "We have Harvey's ship. It's in low orbit on the other side of the planet. You're right – the crate was open, but some of the crew were still alive. We've got them in a medical facility here on the base. That's all I know, Mal. I swear."

"What's wrong with them?"

"They're in some kind of coma. I haven't read the report properly."

"What was in the crate?"

"I don't know. Nobody knows. We put the ship into quarantine after we got our guys off it – we retrieved them in biosuits. Nobody even dared to go into the cargo bay. They think it's an airborne virus. Some of the guys must have natural immunity, which is why they were in the comas."

"That all?"

"That's all, Mal. Please. I swear!"

Mal took in his eyes, and then knocked him unconscious with the butt of his gun. Jacob slumped to the floor.

Jayne was looking at him, perplexed. "How's a big guy like that so afraid of you?"

"Once we interrogated an Alliance scout in the field," said Mal quietly. "He knows what I'm capable of."

"What do we do now?"

"We've gotta find what's left of Harvey's crew."

"Mal…why's it so gorram important to find out what's in that crate?"

"Because apparently it's worth all of our lives. I'd like to know the value whatever bastard put out that job puts on that before I deal with him."

A warning klaxon sounded outside, and the two men flinched on reflex.

"What the hell is that?"

"Quit being so jumpy, Jayne," said Mal, strolling to the cortex. "You're making me nervous."

Flicking it on, he was greeted by a status report intended for Jacob. Scanning it, he found several things that made him swear profusely.

"Ai ya, wo mun wan leh."

"What?"

"We're in big trouble. The Alliance is here, reclaimin' the planet."

"Yeah, so? Didn't we guess they'd do that?"

"Yeah, but that's not half of it. You know the Reaver fleet they've been shepherding around? The one they're driving towards one of their fleets to destroy? Guess where the fleet was based."

Jayne looked at him, full of earnest suspense. "I don't gorram know! Where??"

Mal remembered who he was talking to. "Here, Jayne. Here. They're _in orbit_."

"Gos se," muttered Jayne. "We gotta get outta here!"

"Well, that's the other thing. The Independents just put out an order to capture all of us on sight, to shoot if necessary."

"This week keeps gettin' better and better. Well, I got an idea that should solve all of our problems."

Mal raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

Jayne grinned viciously and fired up Vera. "Gratuitous violence."

Mal sighed. "This will not end well."

**_Next on Void_**

**_"No, I figure she'll guess trouble is about from the sound of gunfire chasing us riding hell for leather in a stolen mule."_**

_Thanks to MAndrews and Eloisa for your reviews._


	7. Flight

_The rating goes up for this chapter and beyond to M._

Jayne and Mal burst through Jacob's cabin door, and almost immediately after they appeared a trooper from the base around them yelled, "There they are!"

A few shots from Vera and the trooper had dived behind some nearby cover, but the alert had been sounded. Every soldier in the area was headed their way.

"Don't you feel bad 'bout shootin' at your old army?" yelled Jayne over the weapons fire, and Mal squeezed off a few rounds before replying.

"Nah – they started it."

"Over there!" called Jayne, and the two men ran, almost back to back sideways, to a hover vehicle that was ticking over close to the row of cabins. A not inconsiderable gang of Independents had gathered, all firing at the wanted men, and Mal and Jayne just avoided being shot to ribbons before they landed on the vehicle, similar to the Serenity's own mule, using it as cover.

"Fire it up!" barked Mal, and Jayne floored the mule to full acceleration. They sped away from the compound.

Mal tried to speak into his comms unit, but after several tries he sighed in disgust and discarded it. This whole situation was becoming quite tiresome.

"They're jamming us," he informed Jayne.

"Where to?"

"We need to find Kaylee and Simon. Swing us by Serenity, so Zoe knows trouble is about."

"We stoppin'?"

"No, I figure she'll guess trouble is about from the sound of gunfire chasing us riding hell for leather in a stolen mule."

"Gotcha."

* * *

"Try and focus your mind," murmured Inara, sitting cross legged on the floor of her shuttle. "Let all of your surface thoughts float out, leaving the emptiness."

"But I'm afraid. I don't like the dark," said River, sitting opposite. Her eyes were closed, but her eyes flitted from side to side beneath the closed lids. She trembled slightly.

"Shh, it's okay. They are only thoughts. They exist only in your brain. They can't hurt you."

But for River, whose limbic system had been forcibly extracted during the horrific scientific experiments forced upon her, her thoughts were a constant assault on her senses. Memories that were years old, when in the focus of her concentration, seemed as real when they replayed in her mind as when they had actually happened. River grew up in a nice part of a nice world, but unfortunately her own memories were not the only thing that shook her up. She possessed the memories of potentially everyone she came into contact with due to her status as a psychic.

She whimpered again, but tried her best to comply with what Inara was saying. When a brain as intelligent and powerful as River's existed, it was difficult to power down under the most normal of circumstances. Now, she was trying her best and it still wasn't working. Inara suspected it might be impossible, but wanted to carry on trying.

"Whatever you see in your mind's eye isn't there. It's just a ghost; a phantom of something that has happened and since passed. It can no longer affect you."

River smiled, but Inara wasn't sure if it was to do with her words or with something she was seeing. Her expression turned after a few moments.

"It's not mine…"

Inara could guess what she meant. "I know they're not yours, sweetie. I can't imagine what it's like for you to carry around the memories of other people…but the same as your own, they can't hurt you or make you do anything."

"The butcher…the butcher and the children…"

This time at a loss, the Companion decided to allow River some time to try and focus despite the constant assault on her mind. She leaned and lit some more incense.

"I couldn't read…I couldn't get the readings…"

"The readings Simon asked you to get?" she asked, thinking of the most recent example of River and readings. "That wasn't your fault, River, the container had a scrambler built into it. Why…do you know what's inside the crate?"

The girl looked as if she was about to say something, but then thought better of it and closed her mouth. She sighed.

"Nothing was there…hollow, it hungered to be filled. I can't see!" she cried out softly, and Inara decided that perhaps they had done enough for one day. She took River's hand, and she opened her eyes.

"I hope what I'm doing helps you River. If you can use what I'm saying to focus your mind more, then maybe you can learn to live with the way your mind works."

The girl smiled meekly. Inara helped her to stand.

"Thank you." She thought and then added almost as an aside, "I have good manners."

Inara smiled and nodded. River cut quite the young, dashing figure. If she hadn't ran into this unfortunate business with the Alliance, she could have been anything she wanted to be – and Inara didn't doubt that an exceptional Companion was among those things, although she suspected Simon would have something to say about that particular thought. "Yes you do, River. We'll make a lady of you yet."

Which was when the klaxon sounded, and Inara ran to the doorway of the shuttle.

"Uhm…stay here, River," she said distractedly, and then ran to the comm to hear from Zoe what the hell was happening.

River was frowning though, taking no heed of what the Companion was saying. She closed her eyes, concentrating, as Inara had just taught her.

"It's…" she whispered. Through the maelstrom of thoughts, memories and feelings that made up the inside of her head, something was moving. So small as to be otherwise unnoticed. A void between the rushing gales of the larger pieces of River's mind. An absence of thought.

"…It's here…"

* * *

As Mal, Jayne and Jacob were walking into the Independent officer's cabin, Kaylee and Simon were already halfway to the town, looking forward to trying to catch a meal. They ambled along together, hand in hand, talking nonsense. Small groups of soldiers were constantly passing them, marching in formation, but they allowed themselves to be overtaken, choosing instead to exercise their civilian right to stroll.

But their discussion was halted mid-sentence at the warning klaxon that echoed across the plain they had just walked across from the Independent command post.

"What's that?" asked Kaylee, confused. The soldiers, although tatty in presentation, and lacking the uniformity of a properly organised army, scrambled with great efficiency, some continuing to the town and some returning to the command post.

Simon took Kaylee's arm, and they stepped back to allow one of the squads past them.

"What's going on, Simon?"

"I'm not sure," said the doctor. A group of soldiers were discussing something fervently between themselves, and one turned and pointed aggressively in their direction. They became the scrutiny of several armed men, and Simon snapped his gaze away from them.

"Uhm…I think we should head back to the ship now." Nervously, Kaylee nodded agreement and they started heading back, away from the path.

"Excuse me!" called a voice behind them, and Simon just squeezed Kaylee's hand.

"Just keep going," he said, but the voice dogged them persistently until it was right behind them.

"Excuse me," it repeated, and Simon turned to face it. He received a clenched fist in the jaw, and staggered back onto the floor. Kaylee cried out in indignation, but she received the back of the soldier's hand. Simon roared in anger and was instantly up, trying to attack the grunt, but his squad mates quickly restrained the less physically imposing surgeon.

The original soldier grabbed Kaylee and dragged her in front of Simon. "This one yours?" he leered, and Simon spat at him. Kaylee's eyes widened in surprise at the extremely un-Simon-like act. "Thought so," continued the thug. A sonic boom reverberated around the field they stood in, and several of the squad looked uneasily at the sky. "We've got orders to bring you in. But I'm thinkin'…what's a little roughin' up gonna hurt?"

He laughed coarsely and started to drag Kaylee towards a small brush of vegetation. She kicked at his shin, but his body armour deflected the attack.

"Get _off me!"_ she screamed, but to no avail. Simon was howling unintelligibly, struggling against the gang of brutes holding him down, but they were too strong for him. The brilliance of the day seemed perverse now, the sun shining happily down on the traumatised couple.

"Make sure you get her necklace!" called one of his accomplices.

The trooper holding Kaylee reached the brush, and turned to address his cohorts, pointing at Simon.

"Make sure _that_ one watc…" he stopped mid-sentence, eyes widening in fear, and his face exploded into a gunshot wound.

The stolen mule roared to a stop behind the surprised Independents, and Mal leaped from the front, landing in front of the next senior soldier and pressing the barrel of his gun right to his forehead. Jayne towered above them ominously, holding his very big gun aimed at the rest of the group.

Mal's eyes seemed to almost physically burn with unholy fury. "You have five seconds to leave my sight, or I will end you."

The trooper took the first of his seconds to quiver, and then ran from Mal down towards the path, followed closely by his compatriots. Simon gathered Kaylee in his arms, and she started to sob in relief. Mal let them stand for a moment, but then attracted their attention.

"We need to leave," he said quietly.

"Thank you," said Simon, and Mal nodded in acceptance.

The tranquil moment was ruined when an enormous vessel erupted over the skyline, raining fire down upon the settlement nearby and heading right their way. Anti-air embankments were firing back, but the ship's defences were holding. Kaylee's comm unit started bleating for attention, and Mal pinched it from Kaylee's overalls.

"_Hers_ works…" he muttered, and activated the unit. "Go ahead."

It was Zoe. _"We've got to leave, _now._ That thing is headed right for us."_

"Agreed. We'll be back in a few -"

"_No sir – we need to leave right now. We'll circle back 'round and pick you up. That thing will blast us to pieces in seconds if it gets in range. There's no way you'll beat it."_

Mal sized up the distance between Serenity and the new cruiser, and deemed that Zoe was correct. "Alright. I'll get you on the wireless to tell you where we're at."

"_Roger that."_

Back in the distance, the small Firefly transport blasted its engines and took off from the landing platform. Mal waited as long as checking it was in the air okay, before climbing back onto their stolen mule.

"All aboard!" he called, and the three members of his crew still on the surface of Hera scrambled to join him, barely landing in their seats before Mal had fired up the small engine mounted to the back of the vehicle.

The cruiser was firing on the soldiers running along the road, creating a wall of fire that was incinerating the fleeing Independents en masse. It blasted overhead, luckily reserving its firepower for the command post, leaving the last stretch of road, which the mule floated above, untouched.

It fired on the compound, obliterating the rows of cabins Mal and Jayne had until recently inhabited.

"So long, Jacob," was the only response Mal elicited, and then turned the mule away from the compound, so they would skirt around it. A massive turret set up on a hillside just away from the compound hit the cruiser and fire started billowing from its belly. It listed badly to port, and then crashed violently into the earth below. It exploded into flames, engulfing a section of the command post.

Mal scanned the skies for Serenity, but he couldn't see the smaller craft. Zoe must have taken them away immediately. At least, he hoped so. Gunfire and explosions wreaked havoc with their ears.

"Where are we going?" called Simon. Mal turned to address him.

"A hospital complex. It'll be on the road on the way to the next town over."

"Oh. Wait. You don't know where it is?"

"No, not as such."

"Uh…what?" said Simon.

"This compound seems to be standard Independent layout. It should be to the east."

A number of smaller vessels were manoeuvring over the skyline of the next town, harpoon cables reaching down from them. Mal glowered at the Reaver ships, but was thankful that they weren't this far over yet.

A small group of buildings rose up quickly before them, and Mal braked gently so they soared to a stop just before the first one. He smirked at Simon. "Y'see?"

The metal support next to his head sparked with a bullet impact, and they scrambled off the mule, using it for cover. Jayne fired Vera back at the small group of Independents guarding the hospital, and after a few – shockingly brief – exchanges of fire, they were free to enter the complex unharassed.

"What is this place?" asked Kaylee, her voice echoing emptily on the inside corridor of the building. Mal took a fearless step forward, and they all fell into line behind him.

"I told ya. It's a hospital complex."

"Why are we here?"

"To find Harvey's crew and get the hell out of here. You know the crate that nobody knows what's inside? Well, turns out all of Harvey's crew aren't quite dead yet, and if anyone knows what's in it, they do."

The power had been cut to the facility, so the lights were out. Their shadows shone onto the wall at different intervals when bombs exploded nearby. Mal secretly hoped that the mule would still be there when they walked back out, but didn't share his anxiety with the others.

He led them into different rooms along the corridor they were walking along, but they were all empty. Finally, they reached the end of the passageway to be greeted with a massive, closed, impenetrable looking door. Mal sized it up.

"Huh. Kaylee, can you do anythin' with this?" he asked.

"Sure can, cap'n," she said, and walked to the door. She touched it with both of her hands, murmured to it softly, took its handle and it swung open almost effortlessly. Mal gaped.

"What did you do?"

She smirked. "Magic."

"That wasn't no magic," Jayne scoffed. "Own up!"

"Fine," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's a Bergner 5000, it keeps closed by an electromagnet. If there's no electricity, there can't be an electromagnet! It was always open."

"Huh," said Jayne, looking perplexed. "So _that's_ what 'electromagnet' means."

"Let's carry on?" suggested Mal, and they stepped inside the not-locked room.

Within lay a heavily sophisticated med-lab, which would have looked doubly impressive had the power been supplied to the building. Simon's eyes widened in appreciation at all of the medical instruments that now surrounded him. Mal's eyes, however, were drawn to the four beds that the lab housed, specifically the three that held human bodies.

One of whom was Mal's old friend, Harvey.

"He's alive," murmured Kaylee. Mal moved forward to check his pulse. It was weak, but it was still there.

"Doctor, check the -" he started, but nearly exited his own skin when Harvey's hand grabbed his.

"Mal," croaked the occupier of the med-lab.

"Harvey?" came the reply. "Quickly, let's get him up."

"He might not be stable enough to move…"

"I don't care about that, we need to get out of here."

"This don't feel right, Mal," said Jayne.

"I don't care if it feels right…"

"What if whatever he's carrying is contagious?" asked Simon.

"It isn't. Do you see any protective suits in here?"

"Do you see anyone else alive in here?" pointed out Kaylee, but Mal pointedly ignored her comment.

"This isn't a discussion," he snapped. "Get this man outta that bed, and up on his feet. Kaylee, grab those discs, they might have scanner data on 'em."

"My crew…" muttered Harvey. Mal shook his head.

"I'm takin' you, and that's it. Let's move like we got a purpose, people!"

The other two members of Harvey's crew didn't stir from their slumber. Mal and the others froze as a very loud crash rumbled from the top of the building.

"What was that?" whispered Kaylee, as if the sound of her voice would upset whatever it was up there, but Mal remained silent for a few moments longer, taking in the noises vibrating from the roof. Finally he said one word.

"Reavers."

This electrocuted the crew into action, hoisting Harvey onto Jayne and Simon's shoulders, the two men carrying the third between them. Mal charged out of the lab door, the sound of footsteps getting ever nearer from above.

"Zoe!" he barked into his comm unit. There was a brief pause, and then the reply.

"_Sir?"_

"We're in a small complex east of the command post. Pick us up outside, preferably five minutes ago."

"_That's not gonna be -"_

"Just do it, or we're all dead!"

There was no further response.

"Quickly!" screamed Kaylee as they reached the entrance to the building, and Mal turned to see what had scared her so badly.

Reavers were spilling out of the stairwell, howling inhumanely, running towards them. Mal took in one second of that sight, and did the only thing he could do.

"Zoe!!" he shouted into the comm, but there was no reply. He turned and followed Kaylee out to the mule, when artificial light bathed them all from above. He looked up to see the sight of Serenity coming in to land gracefully.

"Move!" he cried unnecessarily. As the cargo ramp lowered, Mal was the last person on board. Jayne and Simon dumped Harvey to the deck, who stirred slightly as they let him go.

His arrival didn't bear very well on one crew member in particular.

"No, no, no, no, _no, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!"_ wailed River in a terrible voice that chilled Mal's blood.

Hysterical, River ran from the new arrival and the assembled crew in the cargo bay – and off the ship.

"_RIVER!"_ shouted Simon, and he sprinted after her as the Reavers burst through the main entrance to the hospital complex.

"Simon!" screamed Kaylee, running after the doctor.

"Gorram it – Kaylee!" called Mal, heading after the engineer.

Simon caught up to his sister, and all but grappled her to the ground. She squirmed and screamed for him to let her go, but the surgeon held fast, and together with Kaylee and Mal once they had caught up, managed to barely subdue River.

Tears were streaming down her face, and she was wailing her heart out. "Don't make me do it, Simon, I can't be near him!"

"River!" cried Simon desperately, grabbing her by the shoulders. "I don't know what's wrong, but we have to leave _right now!_ Focus, like Inara said she'd teach you!"

The Companion's name was possibly the luckiest thing Simon had ever spoken, because River seemed to get a grip of herself and took in her surroundings, most notably the Reavers sweeping right towards them.

"We should go!" she cried, and Mal couldn't even think of an appropriate thing to say. Instead, he swept the others along and they boarded Serenity just ahead of the Reaver horde.

"Go!" screamed Inara into the comm, and Zoe started to initiate the take off sequence.

Jayne opened fire on the berserk, flesh-eating humans, joined very quickly by Mal, and anyone else who could find a gun.

The Reavers were cut down in their dozens, but such was their number that the ones they did dispatch were like a field losing a few blades of grass.

The ship had just cleared the ground when the Reavers swarmed underneath, and never one to take any chances, Jayne hung from the cargo ramp and fired indiscriminately into the crowd below them.

His eyes widened. The Reavers were clawing over one another, using each other as a platform to try and reach the escaping ship. The mound of Reavers grew taller and taller and for a moment it looked as if they would be high enough to jump up and climb onto the ship, but Zoe punched the engines and they soared away from the cannibals.

Inara pressed the control that would close the ramp, and the crew, for the most part exhausted, sank back and allowed themselves to take stock.

Not Mal. He started issuing orders as soon as the ramp had clunked shut. He activated the comms unit for the benefit of Zoe in the cockpit.

"Jayne, secure Harvey in the Infirmary – Doctor, take a look at him, try and figure out what's wrong with him. Inara, take River to your shuttle, try and calm her down. Kaylee, I imagine Zoe will be needin' you soon when we break orbit. There's a fleet of Reavers, Independents and Alliance between us and the black, let's not breath easy 'til we get there."

The small crowd of people lifted themselves wearily to their feet, but carried out their instructions without complaint. They all knew that they fulfilled a role in a larger whole, and if any of them failed in their assignment, they could doom the rest to failure. And failure when Reavers are chasing you meant something worse than death.

Mal stomped up and onto the bridge, not allowing himself to think about what might happen if that failure occurred, let alone his feelings of betrayal, and barked for a status report.

"Just like you said in the hold, sir, Reavers, Alliance and Independents, all fightin' amongst themselves."

"Well let's see if we can't slip through the net. Try and skim around the heaviest of the fighting."

"That's a given, sir."

The ship bounced suddenly, rocked by a piece of debris that Serenity impacted.

"Oh and uh…try not to hit anything," said Mal.

"Also a given," she said, shooting a look at him. _I'm not my husband,_ it said, _But I'm going to fly this bucket as best I can, and you've got to accept that, because I'm all you've got. And you'll damned well like it. Sir._

Mal nodded and let her be. Wash would have been open to such arguably unconstructive criticism while he flew, but his widow was considerably less tolerant to backseat driving. Of course, if she crashed the ship into something, he would spend whatever afterlife they all would share taunting her about it, but for now he had to trust in her ability.

And if all else failed, he knew a few tricks for flying buckets himself.

"Kaylee!" he called over the intercom. "Give us everything she's got!"

"Aye, cap'n," was the somewhat hurried response. Mal took a seat in the co-pilots chair.

Almost without warning, they skirted the edge of the combat zone. There weren't a great many ships in orbit, however it was enough to make it register as a fierce battle.

Reaver ships dotted around the larger Alliance cruisers, of which there were two. A third vessel of similar type was exchanging fire with its fellows, indicating it was the cruiser that had defected to the Independents that Jacob had mentioned. Several smaller Independent corvettes flanked the cruiser, and the skies swarmed with fighters.

Zoe was taking them on a course that would completely avoid the Alliance ships, but that would draw them dangerously close to the Independent fleet.

"Everybody hang on to something," announced Zoe, her face a mask of grim concentration. She was handling the controls as if they were a force to be subdued, rather than an instrument to be utilised. The ship was responding as such. Another piece of debris impacted the hull, and Zoe muttered something under her breath.

An alarm beeped on Mal's console, and after a moment he turned to address Zoe. "A wing of fighters is hot on our six," he informed.

Although she appeared to pay him zero attention, he knew that she had heard him. At least, he hoped she had.

Suddenly the deck lurched beneath him, and even Mal's stomach of steel fought to be released from the confines of his body. He clenched his teeth as the view in front of him swept down, to include the sight of a fourth cruiser beneath them. The small Firefly was headed right for it.

"Zoe?" called Mal, but she didn't respond. The hull of the cruiser filled the window in front of him, and at the last moment Zoe tugged back on the controls, bringing Serenity on a course that brought it along the much larger ship.

Gun emplacements burst from their armoured turrets all around the ship, and the vessel juddered so violently that Mal was convinced their starboard engine had been ripped off, but a quick diagnostic informed him everything was fine.

A massive burst of energy impacted the cruiser ahead of them, and the ensuing explosion erupted from the hull like a tidal wave of flame. Veering to port, Serenity avoided being engulfed by a large margin, but this forced them deeper into the melee intensifying all around them. A quick check of the scanner showed that about half of the fighter wing chasing them had been taken out by Zoe's manoeuvre, but they were still being pursued.

"Watch out for that…!" called Mal, but bit his lip halfway through his outburst. Nevertheless, something metallic clanged against the small transport, and a sideways glance from Zoe was enough incitement for Mal to keep his mouth shut. It wasn't like him to be subdued by a member of his crew, but under the present circumstances he was trying to make an exception. Any distraction he made to Zoe increased the chance she would crash into something, and that wouldn't be fun for anybody. He was just having trouble subduing his inner meddler.

"There," he said, pointing towards a gap opening up in the carnage around them, and as it was a sensible suggestion, Zoe steered the ship in that direction. A Reaver ship blasted in front of them, leaving a trail of plasma in its wake. Just as they were about to reach the hole in the fleet, a burst of weapons fire rattled across Serenity, and Zoe had to pull the nose of the vessel right up in order to evade the fire.

A large metallic object directly above them masked the black.

"Cruiser. _Cruiser!_" exclaimed Mal. Zoe pulled sideways, and Serenity responded by turning to starboard. They were flying underneath the Alliance cruiser now, still being pursued by that gorram fighter wing.

A look sideways revealed a gleam in his first mate's eyes, and Mal frowned.

"What are you…? Oh, no, whatever it is, don't do it!"

"I'm gonna get us out of this, sir," she replied. "Whether you like it or not."

Mal did the equivalent of shutting his eyes and praying; he grabbed the intercom and spoke to the ship. "Grab onto somethin', Zoe has something special planned and I don't think it's gonna be steady flying."

Serenity's unwilling pilot continued in the starboard dive, plunging the ship towards the fourth cruiser.

"I hope you're not doing what I _think_ you're doing," said Mal cautiously, but Zoe didn't respond. "Oh, no," he said as the cruiser filled the port in front of him, and an uneasy feeling filled his belly.

"Oh yes," whispered Zoe. Just as the cruiser was so close you could reach out and touch it, the Firefly transport blazed through the hole that had been blown through the cruiser just moments before. Fire, smoke and liquid metal obscured the view, but Zoe navigated the through the exposed innards of the massive vessel with previously unimaginable ease. The sensor board blinked four times, and the fighter wing, unable to keep up, had been eliminated behind them, impacting against the innards of the cruiser around them. A few more moments, and the small transport ship blasted through the last haze of smoke, revealing the comforting sight of free and empty blackness ahead of them.

A few of the cruiser's cannons from its belly fired at them, but the weapons were designed for blowing holes in larger ships, and as such the high calibre rounds were relatively slow, and were easily evaded. The Independents, Alliance and Reavers, all obviously too busy with each other to pay a small cargo ship any heed, quickly forgot about Serenity, and a few moments after they escaped the range of the fourth cruiser's weapons, they appeared to be home free.

Mal let loose a breath of relief, and forcibly uncurled his hands from around the arms of the co-pilots chair. He stood and moved round to behind Zoe, not saying a word.

After a few more moments, she said it for him.

"A leaf I may not be, but that was damned good flying."

He squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, and she seemed to warm to the physical motion.

"Good job," he said quietly, and that was all the encouragement she needed.

"Where to?" she asked, all business again, withdrawing back into her shell of cool disconnection.

"Just keep us going into the black. The further from that fleet, the better. Anything comes up behind us, you shout real loud on the intercom."

"And you?"

"I'm gonna go question our old buddy. Time to find out what the hell's goin' on."

**_Next on Void _**

**_"So how about it, Harvey? Why don't you tell us exactly what happened after you dropped in to see us."_**

_Thanks to MAndrews and moondreamer1 for your reviews! Also, I've just realised how to use rulers, so paragraph spacing should be a lot smoother after this point.  
_


	8. Revelations

Harvey sat on the medical table in the infirmary, surrounded by the crew he had stolen from just a few days previously. Mal had to admit it – he looked terrible. He looked as though he'd lost weight since he last saw him, and he looked like he'd just woken up from a long sleep, which he had, given that he had just recovered from a medical coma. Simon was fiddling with some instrument or another, getting readings from the tissue samples he had taken from the privateer. He turned to face the assembled people in the room after a few more moments of analysis.

"Medically, there's nothing wrong with you," he said to Harvey, and Mal breathed an inward sigh of relief. Part of the risk of bringing Harvey aboard was that he could be carrying some kind of virus that would spread to the others, but with Simon's announcement that possibility was reduced to nearly zero.

However, as always, there was someone looking to ruin a bringer of good news. "So why was he being kept in that medlab?" challenged Jayne.

Simon shrugged. "While I'd ask you to bear in mind that I know nothing about what was in that crate, my best guess would be that there was some kind of biological agent inside, but that Harvey possesses a natural immunity to it. That said, I can't find any trace of a foreign agent in his blood, so maybe he was sheltered from it somehow."

"What about the discs we picked up in the medlab?" asked Kaylee.

"I haven't looked at them yet, but I'll start analysis immediately."

Mal tipped his head in their guest's direction. "So how about it, Harvey? Why don't you tell us exactly what happened after you dropped in to see us."

Harvey looked apprehensively around him, and then started to speak falteringly. "Bef…" Something caught in his throat, and he coughed. "Before I start, I just wanna say that…"

"Save it, Harvey," said Mal. "Just be glad that Zoe is stuck piloting the ship, otherwise she'd have something to say back at you, and I suspect she'd say it with her fists."

Harvey nodded, and decided upon the better part of valour; namely, doing exactly what Mal told him to do. Serenity's captain always knew how to push the younger man's buttons; in a crowd he would take on the 'verse, but once you got him alone, especially against a larger number of people, he clammed up and became the picture of co-operation. It's why he was passed over for a promotion several times; no backbone when it counted.

Mal posed the million-credit question. "What's in the crate?"

Harvey gave Mal a look that indicated that he wasn't going to like the answer, but had to tell him anyway.

"I don't know."

Mal smiled and shook his head. "C'mon, Harvey. Let's not play games, or I really will get Zoe down here, and she really will beat the tar outta you. So I'll ask again. What's in the crate?"

Harvey licked his lips nervously, and shot quick, anxious glances around the room before speaking again. "Really, I don't. All I remember is an alarm sounding in the cargo bay, and then…madness. There was screaming…someone released the seal on the bay. The air was rushing out of the ship, and I was running down the corridor to the emergency override and…" He shook his head, at a loss. "I guess I hit my head, because the next thing I know, I'm waking up in that lab to all of you guys."

Mal pursed his lips. "Let's say I believe you. Let's go through what you've just said. Why would someone open the seal on a ship in space? It's kinda rule number one."

"Maybe whatever's inside was worth doin' it," rumbled Jayne, and Harvey just nodded mute assent.

Mal, however, didn't buy it. "If they opened the seal, then why are you sittin' here? It doesn't quite add up."

"I'm not sayin' it adds up, Mal, but that's what happened," insisted Harvey. As bizarre as his story was, however, Mal believed him. Something about his eyes that made him look years older than when Mal had last seen him…something that gave him the appearance of not having the energy to argue anymore.

"Okay. Let's skip the airlock part. Doctor, did you find any head trauma on your patient?"

Simon shook his head. "Like I said, medically, there's nothing wrong with him. No concussion, no signs of infection from foreign bodies. The only things are that he's slightly malnourished and dehydrated, but that's what I'd expect from someone who's been in a coma for several days. Especially in a battlefield hospital."

That would explain the rasp lurking in the back of Harvey's throat. It sounded like he was rubbing two stones together back there.

"So explain how you lapsed into this coma."

Harvey shrugged, at a loss and not looking particularly keen on thinking up an answer. "No idea. Maybe I hit my head, I was infected by this virus, fell into the coma, and woke up in the hospital." It wasn't a proposition.

"Okay. That's not getting us anywhere. Let's work back. Why did you get sent to steal from us?"

At this Harvey looked slightly more animated, but probably only due to the reminder of the actions he had perpetrated against the crew he was sitting in close proximity with.

"Like I said at the time…we got word that you were carrying something worth stealing; some kind of bioweapon. We were tasked to retrieve it and take it to Hera, possibly to deploy against the Alliance."

"You were gonna use bioweapons against a civilian planet?" asked Kaylee, aghast. Harvey tried to defend himself.

"No, probably not. It was just to use as leverage against them. You know what they're like; closed minded, not open to change. We needed something drastic to get their attention. A virus deployed from space would have been ideal, because it's not something they can cover up."

Mal didn't mention Miranda, an entire planet that had dropped from the face of history, and instead chose to ignore Harvey's naiveté. "Okay, I suppose I get that. I don't agree with it, but I get it. Where did you get your intelligence on the crate?"

"I don't know. The reason we've survived for so long off the radar is because we're split into cells. Some intel gets passed along and you never know where it's from. Other times you get a full briefing. This was one of the times I didn't know."

"You don't know much," snorted Jayne, but Mal ignored him.

"Nothing? Not even who shipped it in the first place?"

"No. Nothing. I just got told to intercept your ship, and that's what I did."

Mal huffed. "Seems to me like there's nothin' so ridiculous as everybody chasin' a crate, and nobody knows what's in it," and there were general nods of agreement from his crew. He sat in silence for a few more moments, pondering to himself.

Kaylee finally broke the silence. "So…what now?"

"Harvey stays here while we all go through the data we snatched from our trigger happy, trap settin' previous employer. Jayne, you and the Doctor keep an eye on him down here. We'll be on the bridge."

Mal led Kaylee and Inara from the infirmary, and started up the stairs to the upper level. River was seeking refuge in Inara's shuttle, not being happy with their guest, as demonstrated when she ran out into the path of hundreds of Reavers rather than share a ship with him, and of course Zoe was piloting. Stepping onto the bridge, Mal could sense his first mate had some tension in knowing Harvey was below, but she stayed to her post with admirable constraint. Mal also guessed that her being the unofficial pilot of the ship would be wreaking havoc with her emotions, it being the station her late husband manned. But there was no time for any of that right now – Zoe had performed admirably escaping the battle above Hera, so she was stuck in the position for the time being. They would have to find a new pilot at a later date.

"Anythin' chasing us?" enquired Mal, but Zoe just shook her head. It appeared they had made a clean getaway.

"Good. Kaylee, call up that mission report. Let's see if we can't find somethin' the Doctor missed."

Mal observed the engineer while she worked the console. She didn't appear to be affected by what those soldiers were about to do to her back on Hera, but it didn't mean to say she wasn't. Kaylee would hide her own trauma if it meant making everyone else feel better, and Mal reminded himself to keep an eye on her.

The engineer slumped at the console, her forehead creasing. "Okay. I pulled up what Simon found; Blue Sun job, dummy front, blah blah. I'm gonna try digging around in the background, see if I can unearth something new."

Zoe, who looked so out of place seated constrained behind the pilot's console, turned to talk to Kaylee. "How is it there's so much intel on something that's tryin' to keep itself hidden on our end now?"

Kaylee replied as she worked. "When I opened the data entry point for you, I threw a net around all of the operational reports in his database. It only pulls in certain types of files…ones with certain keywords, and if there's any flagged links it pulls in those files, too. We ended up with most of the related reports to our job."

"Anything yet?"

"No…wait…hang on, I think I got something." The screen flickered and then threw up some new information. Kaylee's adept eyes scanned the page. Something was clearly bothering her, as she wasn't being as completely cheerful as before. Maybe she was just concentrating. "It's a related file in the records of the dummy corporation. It dates back to…Earth-That-Was," she said, her eyes going wide.

"What does it say?"

"No wait…two files. This can't be right…"

"What?" asked Inara, held in suspense.

"One of them is dated _after_ the Exodus. It means that someone is still talking to Earth-That…well, Is, I guess."

"How long ago?" asked Mal, and Kaylee pointed to the exact date on the screen. "That ain't so strange," he said. "It was sorta common practice for big corporations to keep an eye on us just after we moved out. Over time, though, it's moved to nearly nothing. What do the files say?"

"They're heavily encrypted…I don't think I'm gonna be able to break it. I'll try and get fragments. Here – something about a planet Erebus in the Styx system." She turned to look at the others. "I didn't know Earth-That-Was had other colonies."

Inara nodded. "I studied ancient history at the Academy. At first, the people of Earth mined the asteroid belt in the Sol system, but it became quickly evident that this would not help the matter of overpopulation. So colony ships were despatched with terraforming units to make rocks in space become habitable. Around that time, someone discovered this system we inhabit, and everyone's problems were solved. The Exodus left Earth, and over time we dropped out of contact because of the vast distance between them and us. The fact Earth-That-Was could still be there is a fact most people don't seem to realise, but it's likely."

"What did it say about this colony?" prompted Mal.

"I don't have much of the passage decoded…but what I do have says something about a disaster, terraforming units failing…and the second file looks like a mission to find out what went wrong."

"Maybe the same virus as whatever is in the crate?" put forward Inara, but of course no one present knew the answer.

The comms panel started blinking, and Mal moved to answer it as Zoe called, "Incoming wave."

He flicked a switch and a stranger appeared on the monitor. "Captain Reynolds?" he said.

"Who's askin'?"

"I'm Captain Andrews of the New Independents. Please, listen to what I have to say."

Mal's hand stopped halfway to deactivating the cortex.

He got straight to the point. "I have been charged by my superiors with two tasks. I'm aware that you have an officer of our Navy on board your ship. My mission is to find your ship and to recover our officer, but as I'm also aware, you are a man who, if you do not desire to be found, you won't be."

"That's about accurate."

"So at first glance, my task is an impossible one. However, I believe we can come to some kind of arrangement."

"I'm listening."

Andrews' eyes lit with emotion, and Mal saw something of himself in the younger man. Suddenly he could see all of this man before him; a volunteer, full of ideals, not yet scarred by the brutal reality of what it is he must do. Old enough to know better, but young enough to do it anyway.

"I joined the Independents because I do not believe what the Alliance is doing is right. I wasn't old enough to join up first time around, when you fought your war, so when this opportunity presented itself I jumped at the chance. They gave me a small ship because of my background, and my role is scouting and tracking certain targets. However…lately, some of the things I'm hearing tell me that this new Independent movement is closer to the Alliance than they would care to admit. Cover ups, covert operations, assassinations…you get the picture."

"I do. I've been the focus of their more recent activities."

"So when I was assigned to track you down, I was eager to make your acquaintance. I've seen your service record, Captain, and though I will not claim to know you, I will say that I think I know what kind of a man you are. One who does not intentionally get involved in shady affairs such as this."

Mal straightened and folded his arms. "I think I sense a point developing here."

Andrews nodded. "I'm willing to use a little…flexibility…in carrying out my task. I don't believe that my superiors have an objective viewpoint to make a proper assessment of the situation; they should be working with you, not assigning a tracker to hunt you down. Therefore, I propose an exchange; I will help you ascertain exactly what is going on, and in return, you will return Captain Harvey to me."

"In that order."

"Of course."

"If you can get me answers, I'll be more than happy to return your Captain."

"Very well then," said Andrews. "Within reason, of course, I am at your disposal."

"The only thing I need from you is a video feed lookin' into the open crate Harvey's crew took from us."

"That's all?"

"Yup. All I need is a little curiosity satisfyin', and then I'll be on my way. After returnin' Harvey, of course."

Andrews nodded. "Then I'll contact you when the feed is ready."

Mal flicked the switch, and the wave went dark. Zoe raised her eyebrows at him.

"Seems like the only trustworthy Independents these days are ones we don't know."

"We don't know if he's trustworthy yet," said Mal. "That seemed a little too easy. But he seemed to be on the level. More concerned about his missing man than getting viruses to set loose on civilian worlds." He stared at the deck for a few moments, and then realised something. "I'm famished," he said. "Let's go eat."

* * *

The crew, plus Harvey, bustled excitedly around the mess table, having missed their last meal by several hours. Inara stood in the kitchen, preparing several bowls of food, and River darted back and forth between them depositing items on the table. 

Mal took the seat at the head of the table, and following suit, the others clattered chairs back and sat on them.

Harvey went to take a chunk of bread, but Jayne's hand snapped around his wrist, stopping him from retrieving it.

"Nobody eats til we say Grace," he growled, and Harvey was quick to remove his hand from the proximity of food.

"You don't strike me as a particularly religious man," he said, frowning, and for a moment nobody met his eye or responded to his comment.

Finally, Mal spoke for the rest of them. "The Grace isn't for us. It's a tradition we continue out of respect for an old friend who ain't with us no more. Somethin' I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"The same way I don't understand why you left _my_ old friends to be torn apart by Reavers in that hospital?" asked Harvey, an edge creeping back into his eye.

Mal met his glare. "You're lucky I brought you at all. You're only here so I can figure out what's goin' on out there against me and mine. Now shut the hell up – I hear another complaint from you, and I'll throw you out of the airlock."

Inara deposited the last bowl on the table, and took the only remaining seat. They all hunched over their plates, eyes to the table. Kaylee spoke out loud.

"Thanks for the food, most of the company, and even though we're havin' a bit of a rough time of it lately, thanks for keepin' us in one piece. Amen."

The others muttered the final word of her prayer, and then began to take items of food enthusiastically.

None so enthusiastically as Harvey, however. He shoved the chunk of bread he had just tried to take into his mouth, and placed items of food seemingly at random on his plate. Before long, he was attracting faintly disgusted glances from both Simon and Inara, but Mal simply looked mildly amused, his momentary hostility all but evaporated.

"Hungry, Harvey?" he asked. His former squad mate nodded.

"Be careful," warned Simon, his warning stemming not from concern but from duty. "You'll get something stuck going down having not eaten for so long." Zoe, who had been strategically placed on the other side of the table, glowered in their guest's direction.

"Why _aren't_ we throwing him out of the airlock?" she asked.

Harvey caught the edge in her voice and, not wanting a confrontation, slowed down a gear on his food consumption.

"Because even though he's done us wrong, he's here, and we gotta take care of him," said Mal. "To a basic level, anyhow."

"Would that involve not beatin' the tar out of him?"

Mal grinned at Harvey. "See? I told ya she'd do it. And yes Zoe, it would involve not doing that."

Satisfied she had scared Harvey enough for the moment, Zoe withdrew back into herself and started eating.

"Where are we on looking through those files?" asked Simon, but Kaylee waved him to silence.

"Not now, we're eatin'. I'll tell you all about it when we're finished."

"Good call," muttered Jayne. "I'm gettin' tired of all this talk of crates and viruses 'n stuff. I just wanna chow down in peace."

"This is really good," said Mal around a mouthful of food. Inara nodded her head slightly at the compliment.

"Thank you, although I'm no culinary genius. River is showing herself to be quite adept at it, however."

"How did your therapy go?" asked Simon.

"Quite well for a beginner." At some enquiring glances from the others, she elaborated. "I tried to instruct River on how to meditate earlier. Although she had difficulty maintaining her composure, I believe there were moments when she achieved a serene state of mind."

"Careful Doctor," said Mal. "There are some practices I'm sure you don't want River to pick up from Inara." River, sitting as close to Zoe as possible, offered no indication she was paying attention to what they were saying.

"She seems to be progressing down the road of petty thief fairly well based on her success piloting the ship," returned Inara coolly. "I thought perhaps she could use instruction on the other end of the spectrum." Mal just smiled lopsidedly to himself. He hated to admit it, but he did enjoy his sparring sessions with Inara.

"Maybe you can take her with you to meet your next client," he said. "I imagine there are a few men out there willing to pay a whole lot of cash to share company with two ladies the likes of you and River."

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk about River like that," said Simon.

"A client pays for a Companion's company, not just physical intimacy," said Inara loftily.

"What's not to like about River's…"

Harvey coughed loudly, breaking Mal's train of speech. He afforded their unofficial prisoner an annoyed glance, and then started to speak again.

"What's not to…"

But he was cut off again, Harvey coughing and staring at the table in an odd manner.

"Shouldn't be shovellin' food into your mouth like that, else you're gonna end up chokin' on it," said Jayne from beside the man.

Harvey's coughing degenerated into him wheezing instead of breathing, and he brought his hands up to his throat, looking around the table, pleading with his eyes.

Simon stood up and put his hand on Harvey's shoulder, looking mildly concerned. Their unwelcome guest merely drew distracted glances from the others, who continued eating.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean, 'what's wrong,' you said it before, he just ate too much food is all."

Harvey's breath seemed to stabilise into a series of shaky breaths in and out, and his hands now gripped the table, his knuckles white. He trembled with his whole body.

"What's wrong?" asked Simon again, and Harvey moved only his eyes to look at the Doctor.

"Cramps…" he managed to say.

"See?" said Jayne.

"Try drinking some water," suggested Inara, handing him a glass from where she sat opposite. But the proffered glass remained untouched in her hand.

"Getting worse…" said Harvey from in between clenched teeth.

"That'll teach ya to…" said Mal, but Harvey let out a long groan that cut him off mid sentence. No one was touching their food now.

Suddenly he lashed out his hands, sending the glass of water Inara was holding smashing to the table, showering Kaylee and Mal with the clear liquid. They sprang from their seats as Harvey screamed, chilling the blood of everyone present.

He rose from his chair, one hand clutching at Simon's shoulder, the other waving manically, as if trying to balance himself against falling over. He turned and fell back against the surface of the table, Jayne pinning him down as Simon called for the others to back away. Suddenly everyone was standing, looking on in hair-raising alarm. River had started to cry, and clutched at Zoe's arm for protection as she looked on in child-like horror.

"Somebody run to the infirmary and get my…" called Simon, but Harvey screamed louder than before, drowning out all conscious thought with the insanity behind it. Liquid gurgled up his throat and the scream erupted in a fountain of blood from his mouth.

"What the hell's the matter with him?" cried Jayne, but all motion was ceased when blood sprayed from Harvey's chest, showering Jayne and Simon in a fine mist. Stunned silence descended upon the mess, the only noise coming from River sobbing in the corner.

His chest convulsed, but the man lay still, prostate on the table. With a sharp crack, his rib cage splintered open from within, and a thing spawned in the worst of nightmares emerged from within it. A long, white head that ended in rows of impossibly sharp teeth emerged, followed by two arms that ended with scythe-like claws; and no external organs of any kind, even eyes. It was a sickly pale, streaked with crimson blood and pieces of skin and bone.

There was a moment of stunned, horrified inactivity, but then River screamed, a long, manic scream with no thought behind it, only terror. The creature hissed at Simon, its jaws moving apart to reveal what appeared to be a secondary set of teeth within its mouth, and then it hauled the rest of itself from inside the still twitching Harvey.

As it moved, so did Mal. He drew the pistol concealed beneath the table of the mess, and fired at the retreating creature.

It was deceptively fast, however, and Mal missed with the first shot. The second and third shots also missed the mark, but with the fourth he managed to clip the creature, and yellow liquid burst from its ruptured skin, spraying the deck as it disappeared out the door towards the engine room.

The metal of the deck hissed violently, the liquid eating into the otherwise sturdy hull of the ship. Pitted marks sank into the floor, acrid smoke rising from the wound.

Mal stormed across the mess and slammed the door to the rear section closed.

"What the _hell_ just happened?" demanded Jayne, his voice straying towards manic. No one besides Mal was moving. Kaylee stood staring blankly at Harvey's mangled corpse. River clung to Zoe, crying hysterically. The metallic smell of blood filled the room, drowning out the more pleasant aroma of recently prepared food. The smell of blood, and something nastier and much more substantial; freshly butchered meat.

"It must be…" said Simon, staring dazedly at the bloody hole in Harvey's chest. "It must have gestated inside of him…like a parasite…"

"It's the Void!" cried River, Zoe placing an arm around her in an almost futile attempt at reassurance. "Can't get a reading! The butcher has been born from the children…"

Simon half snapped out of whatever trance he was in and walked across to where Zoe cradled River, taking his sister from the first mate. "River," he said, holding her gently by the shoulders. "Are you saying that that…thing…was in the cargo crate we were carrying? Remember? The one you couldn't get a reading on?"

She looked up at him, tears streaking her face, but now she was calmer, as if she had been sedated. "The children were in the crate," she said, letting Simon almost fully support her weight. "The butcher was inside him."

"Will you get her to _shut up?_" demanded Jayne. "We've got a bit of a situation here."

"Jayne?" said Mal evenly, expressionlessly. He was staring intently at River. "Shut. Up."

"What children, River?" asked Simon.

"Lost from their mother…They told me they wanted to go back. They were hungry. They wanted to be with me. They needed to be hollow." Her face creased with tears again. "No thought. There was no thought. I couldn't get a reading. But they still spoke to me!"

Mal, who had seemed to have slipped into some kind of catatonia, dropped onto one knee and observed the pitted holes the creature's…blood?…had left in the ship.

"Sir!" called Zoe in warning as Mal's hand reached towards the remnants of the fluid, but he broke away, picked up a discarded knife from the table, and poked the fluid with it.

After several moments, he withdrew it. The point of the knife had blackened and was smouldering with potent, acidic smoke. He observed it for a few moments, and abruptly dropped it.

"Everyone onto the bridge," he almost shouted, and the rest of the crew obediently filed out of the mess without any comment. Mal, the last one into the command centre of the ship, closed and locked the hatch behind them.

"Cap'n…" said Kaylee, gripping Simon's hand tightly. Unshed tears shone in her eyes, shock refusing to allow her to cry in terror. "What's on our ship?"

He glanced at each of them, taking in their faces. Out of everyone, Zoe and Simon seemed to be the only ones keeping it together completely, though their eyes were a little wild. Jayne, Inara and Kaylee seemed shaken up, but not to the point of being rendered useless. River was roving between mania and alarming calmness, but her unstable mental condition was nothing new. They were all looking to him for an answer he didn't have.

Before he had to say anything, the comms panel beeped for attention on the side of the pilot's station. He ignored the question and moved to answer it. It was Andrews.

He wasn't on his ship, however. He stood in a dimly lit room, in the view of a poor quality video capture device. "Captain Reynolds, I have your video feed set up," he said, and Mal just nodded. The view swung from Andrews to focus on the interior of Harvey's ship; more specifically, the cargo hold.

The long pursued cargo container sat with its lid ajar, and the camera operator's companions flipped it to one side, exposing the interior.

"What in the name of God…?" whispered Simon, and the others were all similarly dismayed.

There was a neat arrangement of leathery pods lining the inside of the container, four rows of two; eight in all. Six of the pods were hollowed out and looked withered, however two remained closed, and glistened with an organic malevolence. Mal wondered if they actually looked menacing, or whether he was simply associating the contents of the crate with the creature that had just…appeared...in the mess.

His train of thought was cut short when one of the men behind the camera shone his torch on one of the remaining pods. It reacted to the light.

"Andrews!" called Mal, but his fellow Captain had already made the instruction. The light returned to the pod, and it became almost incandescent, showing a twitching, reacting, chillingly biological interior.

"Andrews, I don't think it's such a good idea to excite that thing," warned Mal, but the pod's cover had already began to react to the human presence around it.

The…_lips_ of the shell curled back slowly, almost seductively, to reveal a mess of oozing, flowing tubes and lumps of organic matter.

The camera operator leaned in towards the object, to get a better view of the interior.

A shock of activity burst from the pod, and the crew standing observing the events remotely were afforded a horrifying glance at what the secondary storage containers enclosed.

Almost human fingers sprouted from a central 'mouth', of which a tube-like 'tongue' emerged, seeking something that all of the observers instinctively knew they possessed. A long tail propelled the monstrosity forwards, towards the camera, and the nightmare wrapped its 'hand' around the piece of equipment, affording the operator a chance for survival.

With a startled yell, the man dropped the camera, and the creature was shaken free from the impact as it hit the deck. The sight sickened Mal, and someone started to retch behind him. He felt bile rise in the back of his own throat. Perhaps it was instinctive, as the reason behind the automatic reaction occurred to him just seconds later; the creature had been groping for the camera operator's face, and the real purpose of the tongue that reached desperately from the centre of the monster on the screen could be inferred from there.

Startled cries echoed through the speakers around the bridge, and a couple of gunshots fired. The shape of the creature darted past the camera, crawled up the leg of one of Andrews' men, and mercifully left the camera shot. The man screamed, beyond madness, and his legs fell horizontal to the floor.

"Oh my God…Oh my God…" someone was repeating over and over again like a mantra on the screen, and a second, now horrifyingly familiar shadow scampered across the camera lens.

"Shoot it!" cried Andrews manically over the commotion, and although a few gunshots fired off, another scream burst from the speakers.

"_Get it off me!!"_ screeched another male, and it was unclear what had happened afterwards because all noise from the cargo bay ceased, replaced by an eerie silence.

Nothing happened for what felt like an eternity; not even footsteps were echoing on the deck of the other ship. Mal didn't even want to breath.

A virus? There was never any virus in that crate. Only creatures that hibernated inside leathery eggs – because that is what they must surely be – waiting for their time to strike. With one mention of a bioweapon, and one mention of the word 'virus', everyone's focus had been so directed on obtaining it that they never once considered there might be something else inside. Mal cursed his own stupidity for ever accepting that job; ever walking into that bar; ever allowing Harvey on board his ship; ever returning to Hera. He wished this calamity on anyone else; he wished time itself would turn back one week, and that this would never occur. And lastly, strangely most of all despite all of his previous thoughts, he wished that there was someone left alive on the other end of this transmission.

Finally he thought that he should break the silence, but so intense it was that he felt intimidated from making a noise that would breach it.

"…Andrews?" he said.

A shape flickered onto the screen and the camera juddered. The crew collectively jumped at the sudden movement, but Andrews' face soon came into focus, making them realise it was no cause for further alarm.

"Captain Reynolds," he said, his voice sounding muffled. The microphone must have been damaged in the confusion. His eyes were wide, and he looked slightly unhinged. "As for the contents of the crate, I think you have your answer."

_**Next on Void**_

"…_**Now I'd appreciate it if you could return my soldier, and if you could tell me what the hell is going on, that'd be great."**_

_Thanks to MAndrews, epm0001 and Tyramir for your reviews.  
_


	9. Aftermath

_Further disclaimer: I don't own the Alien, or any of its developmental stages, nor any of the characters from that series I might mention._

"…Now I'd appreciate it if you could return my soldier, and if you could tell me what the hell is going on, that'd be great."

Mal paused for a moment before speaking. "…Uh, he's dead. You can have what's left of him back, but don't plan on holdin' any long conversations with him."

Andrews scowled into the lens. "We had an agreement, Captain."

"Wasn't us. Some…_thing_…burst outta his chest and ran away into my ship." Mal clenched his teeth at the recent memory, the smell of blood still stuck in his nostrils. He didn't even think it had sunk in properly yet. "I think it's got somethin' to do with those things in the crate. But…we can't be sure."

Andrews was thoughtful, and then swung the camera onto the body of one of his men. The creature that had burst from the closed pods in the crate was wrapped around his face, its tail around his neck. One of Andrews' crew was trying to pry it off, but the harder he pulled, the tighter the tail gripped.

"These things are nasty; it looks like they're feeding off my men. I'm going to return to my ship, figure out what's happening to them. I'll send you a wave once we have a controlled situation. Andrews out."

The screen blinked to darkness, and Serenity's crew were left alone again.

After a long silence, Simon was the first to break it.

"I have the scanner data we retrieved with Captain Harvey. I can analyse it, see if we can get any more information on what's happening."

"Where is it, Doctor?"

Simon paused. "The infirmary."

The lowest point of the ship, save the passenger dorm. A Firefly was small, and the thought of venturing out to where that creature might be hiding was unnerving.

"Well," said Mal after a moment's hesitation, "We'd better go get it. Jayne, you're with Simon and me. Zoe, you have the conn. Everyone else…try and keep it together, this'll be over soon. We'll be back shortly."

He nodded at the other two men as Zoe took the pilot's chair, and they moved towards the locked hatch.

"Any direction?" asked Zoe, and Mal had to think for a few seconds.

"Just keep us away from the Alliance. A fringe world would be good."

"Aye, sir."

"Well then," he said to the men nervously assembled by the door. "Let's go."

"Mal," said Inara suddenly, and the captain turned to face her. "Be careful."

He nodded as reassuringly as he could, flipped the lock and threw the hatch open. "Lock this behind us," he instructed Inara, and then turned to leave.

Jayne was first through, Vera clutched to him both as an offensive weapon and as a child might hold a stuffed toy for security in times of distress. Mal padded down the hallway as Jayne stopped, giving him cover, and Simon moved to the point between them. The hatch to the bridge slammed shut behind them.

Mal looked back and nodded tensely at Jayne, who moved past him to the entrance of the mess. Mal moved up to join him, and they swept the mess with their gaze, trying to pick out prime locations where small, aggressive creatures might be hiding.

The door that lead to the engine room was still reassuringly shut, but the creature could have come back around via the other hallway, so Mal didn't want to take any chances.

The captain stepped inside the room, and cautiously moved around to the kitchen, gun drawn ahead of him, finger tensed on the trigger. Shadows that lurked beneath counters and behind appliances seemed to gleam with rows of teeth and razor sharp claws. He almost shot the kettle, which was a suspiciously similar colour to the creature they were looking out for.

Jayne almost tiptoed in behind him, and after a few moments they established that the mess was devoid of any non-human presence. A quick glance dissolved some of the tension that had almost paralysed both men's shoulders, and their relief in turn made Simon relax.

Cocky now, Jayne swaggered around the table, although not yet brave enough to take in Harvey's mutilated body that still lay butchered on the table.

"What are we gettin' so worried about anyhow?" he asked. "It's only a little thing, after all. Just the way it made its entrance is all. I reckon we can catch it easy enough, throw it outside and let the vacuum deal with the rest."

Simon brushed past the worktop attached to the kitchen and accidentally knocked off a plate that was balanced precariously near the edge. It clattered to the ground noisily, and Jayne, as well as the other two men, jumped wildly at the sound. The big man squeezed the trigger of his weapon, and a couple of rounds burst out of the muzzle into the deck, and each of them were startled even more severely by the loud reports.

"Jayne, what the hell are you doing?" demanded Mal, his nerves tattered. "Just…calm down, everyone. Jayne's right, it's only an animal, 'bout the size of a small dog, I'd say. Easy enough to grab and eject. We'll wrap it up in some bed sheets and lock it in the cargo bay."

"I was thinkin' bout doing that after we'd shot it a few times," admitted Jayne. Simon shook his head forcibly.

"No. You mustn't shoot it. Look at the deck below you." Jayne glanced down; saw the blackened, pitted holes in the metal there. "When Mal shot it while it was escaping from us, some fluid inside it did that to the alloy. If you shot a bigger hole in it, the fluid could work right through the ship and make a breach, or if not, damage one of the systems like life support."

"The doc's right," agreed Mal. "In fact, it's probably a bad idea us even carrying these around, in case we have a reaction like Jayne just did." He deactivated his weapon and placed it on the kitchen work surface. Jayne glowered at him.

"I ain't leavin' here without Vera."

"Jayne, don't make me tell you to do it," glared Mal.

Jayne met his eyes for a few more moments, and then arrived at a happy compromise in his head. He took the clip from the weapon, ejected the round in the chamber, and clutched the rifle to his chest, his eyes daring Mal to say something about it. The captain glowed with hidden amusement, as best he could under the circumstances, but allowed Jayne to continue with the weapon in its current state.

Jayne was right – they had all been so unnerved by the creature's grand entrance that they had failed to take into account the threat it now presented to them. While it looked like a dangerous animal, and there was no doubt it was, it was a lot smaller than they were, and they had weapons, tools, and the home field advantage. As he had previously thought, Firefly was a small ship, and there were only a limited number of places it could be hiding.

The smell of the mess caught more strongly in his nostrils, evaporating some of his confidence. He'd need to get the place fumigated once they reached port; it smelled like a butcher shop in here.

"Alright, we're almost there. Let's do this quickly, quietly, and carefully. We don't want any accidents."

Approaching the hatch to the engine room, his newfound confidence all but disappeared. This was the doorway the creature had disappeared into, and so this was more than likely the place they'd run into it. He breathed steadily once, and then flipped the handle to unlock the door.

He swung it open, expecting to be met with some kind of screeching, beastly attack cry, but all he saw was the corridor that led to the heart of the ship. After a few moments of waiting, as if his patience would reveal the sight of the monster, he nodded back to Jayne and the mercenary marched in ahead of him.

Mal was down the stairs after Jayne nodded back to him, and from there into the infirmary. All three men breathed a silent sigh of relief, having ran into no creatures lurking behind the couches and chairs of the common area. Simon moved immediately to the console he had been studying after Harvey arrived and set to work.

"They're here," he said, referring to the data discs, as if he had been expecting them to be missing; that the creature might have moved them to prevent the crew from learning its secrets.

"Well then, get to work," said Mal unnecessarily. Simon provided no reply. "Jayne, watch the door." The man sat on the examination table and pointed Vera at the entrance to the room, despite the fact the weapon had no ammo. Mal trusted Jayne would remember that, should trouble find them here.

The intercom crackled, setting Mal's nerves on edge slightly.

"_Sir, are you there?"_

He moved to the panel near the rear of the room and activated it. "That's affirmative. No contact with our little friend, though."

Inara's troubled voice floated to Mal's ears. _"We heard gunshots."_

"That was just Jayne being…uh…slightly excitable. Everything's as we left it," he added significantly, communicating to Zoe, and anyone else who put as much thought into what he had said, that Harvey's body was still on display. Anyone with a sensitive disposition, please turn away now, thought Mal.

"_Cap'n?"_ It was Kaylee this time. _"I'm gonna work with the others, see if we can get any further on crackin' the encryption on these files. We might get some answers."_

"Good work, Kaylee. Well then, we'll stay down here; see if the doc can rustle up some ideas on how we get rid of this thing. You know how to reach us."

Just as he was about to deactivate the comms panel, the ship juddered beneath his feet, and he felt something shudder to a stop above him. "Report!" he barked, all business.

"_Our port engine just died,"_ said Zoe over a flurry of activity.

"_The main line to the dorsal cluster just broke,"_ said Kaylee. _"We lost power to the port engine, to the cargo bay and some of the scanners."_

"_We're drifting to port,"_ announced Zoe.

"_The systems are fine, it's just like the line…broke…"_ said Kaylee, realisation hitting her.

"Zoe, meet me in the mess," ordered Mal. "Power down the engines, we aren't goin' anywhere for a while."

As he marched out of the infirmary, Jayne was alarmed behind him.

"Mal, where are you goin'?"

"To find that thing and get rid of it. Stay here and keep an eye on the doc."

Sprinting up the stairs, he found Zoe, arms folded across her chest, waiting for him.

"Leave that here," said Mal, indicating the rifle she had placed on the table. "But I guess you already knew that."

She didn't acknowledge him other than nodding. But after a moment of standing pensively, she spoke her mind.

"What aren't you tellin' us, sir?"

Mal paused in mid-stride, thrown off guard by the question. "Nothin'," he said earnestly.

She arched an eyebrow, as if to tell him that he of all people should know better than to try to deceive her. Finally he relaxed his shoulders minutely.

"Look, it's nothin'. I've just got a bad feelin' about all of this."

She stared at him quizzically, and then looked significantly at Harvey's body. "More than the rest of us?"

He shook his head. "Like I said, it's nothin'. I just think that we haven't heard the last of it. I mean…Blue Sun? Why were they shippin' that crate around so unprotected? All we got was a stern warning before we left Aries."

"That crate was going to open anyhow."

"Yeah, but it just doesn't add up. How far along was Kaylee with those files?"

"She was makin' some progress," said Zoe. "But she got distracted by the broken cluster."

Mal nodded, nothing left to say. It all hinged on Kaylee cracking those computer files. He'd never figured her to be that good with computers, that her talent lay on the opposite technical pole. But, it wouldn't be the first – or last – time he'd be surprised by one of his crew.

He jerked his head, and he and Zoe exited the mess towards the dorsal cluster.

* * *

Kaylee's brow creased more and more with concentration, and when it appeared it would finally break in two, she stood and grunted in exasperation. The computer screen blinked at her mockingly, denying her access to the information locked inside for the umpteenth time. 

"What's wrong?" asked Inara.

"I can't _do_ this," the girl exclaimed in frustration. "I'm a gorram _engineer_, not an analyst."

Inara moved to Kaylee's side, rubbing her arm reassuringly. Neither of them noticed River glance inquisitively at the now unoccupied console.

"Of course you can, Kaylee. Remember what we used to talk about – don't try and figure out the answer, try to _remember_ the answer."

"But I can't do this," she repeated, some of the strength leaving her. She slumped against the wall, and Inara was left to gaze worriedly at her. "I don't know where we went so _wrong._ Crates with monsters in 'em, people wantin' to gas planets in the name of the capn's cause, the Alliance doin' their same old thing, soldiers who wanna…who wanna do bad things to you… Now it looks like the company whose cereal I eat every mornin' set out to have us killed! All while there's a…" She hesitated, as if unsure whether or not to use the term. "…Night Stalker loose on our ship. Our home! It's come into our _home_ and _violated_ us."

The normally serene Inara was troubled by Kaylee's outburst, and before she could think of anything to say that would come close to quelling the fear even one of the engineer's points evoked, help came from another source.

"Zero point algorithm," said River from the console. She typed a few commands into the system and segments of the file that were being displayed coalesced into plain English. Her trauma temporarily forgotten, Kaylee moved, amazed, to River's side.

"River?" she asked in wonder. "How do you know how to do that?"

The girl looked up with a complete lack of self-consciousness. "It's all just up there," she said, tapping her forehead.

Kaylee leaned in to read what River had revealed. "This is amazing. River, can you decrypt the rest of the files?"

River nodded. "I can." She input more commands, and some more of the file was translated from the code.

Kaylee pulled up the files that River was decoding on another screen and started to scan the entry. She briefly read through the files.

At the same time, Mal called to her on the comm.

"Kaylee? We're at the duct lookin' into the dorsal cluster. Seems like our new friend busted it up with some of that acidic stuff he burst all over the deck of my mess hall. Looks pretty toasted." 

Momentarily distracted from reading through the files, she broke from her task. "You sure? I fixed up the ol' girl from a few nasty scrapes before now…"

"_Nah, I don't think so. There's not much of it left, and what's there is pretty much ashes. That yellow stuff is hella strong. Have you made much progress?"_

"Yeah, it turns out River can decrypt classified military files," she said, relieved that the burden of the task had been lifted but at the same time disappointed she hadn't been able to do it herself. "I'll read ya the bits that mean somethin' to us."

"Okay, I'm listenin'. Pipe it down to the Infirmary, so the others can hear too."

She fiddled with some buttons so she could be heard in the medical centre, and then started to summarise what she had read.

"Turns out that the dummy front set up by Blue Sun ain't a dummy front at all. Back on Earth-That-Whatever-It-Is-Now, it was a major player in pretty much every part of life, kinda like the way we're realisin' Blue Sun is now. Some of it's less well publicised activities," and she quoted directly from the file, "'Included weapons research, which in turn comprised genetic experimentation, nuclear testing and weaponising biological agents.' Long story short, they found the creature we've got on the ship and tried to make it into a weapon, but it backfired."

Mal and Zoe were hunched over the duct that led into the bowels of the ship, peering at what was left of the dorsal cluster. Kaylee's voice crackled over the earwigs they both wore.

"_First they tricked a ship into lookin' on the planet they detected the…"_ and here she paused, obviously encountering a word she had difficulty processing. _"…The _alien_ on remotely, and all but one of that crew were killed when they realised they'd brought it back on board."_

Mal and Zoe exchanged a significant glance upon hearing Kaylee's last words.

_"The survivor drifted for decades in cryo-stasis until she got picked up by a salvage crew and returned to Earth. This was about the time our great great granddaddies were on their way here. They sent a bunch of soldiers back to the planet to check it out, because they'd set up a colony there and lost contact with it. The mission went wrong, near all of the rescue team died, and the company covered it up as terraforming event. They renamed the planet Erebus but never returned there."_

"This company have a name?" asked Mal, now curious. He had previously shushed Simon, assuming the core company would be the most vital information, but now the history of the 'dummy' front could hold the key to what was going on.

_"Weyland-Yutani."_ Something in Mal's memory whirled, and it took him a few moments to remember why the name sounded familiar. Then it came back to him – he'd seen the end of an infomercial about the company being played in the bar where they had ran into Harvey. He recalled the company slogan; Building Better Worlds.

"It's not here, sir," said Zoe, and Mal nodded his agreement. The duct was too narrow for them to crawl into past the access point to the cluster, and the creature had burrowed through it, escaping their grasp.

"We'll catch it down the line," said Mal, and they started back towards the bridge.

Down in the infirmary, neither of its occupants were paying much attention to Kaylee's report. Simon was too busy concentrating on his research, and Jayne didn't trouble himself over the details; someone would give him an abridged version later, and he would start listening if his subconscious picked up anything that registered about killing it.

_"I take it Blue Sun bought Weyland-Yutani at some point?"_ asked Mal.

_"…Yeah. Says here there was an aggressive buyout about forty years ago."_

_"And Blue Sun picked up right where they left off."_

_"That's the long and short of it."_

"Captain," said Simon suddenly. "I think you'll want to come and take a look at this."

_"On my way. Carry on, Kaylee."_

_"That's pretty much it,"_ said Kaylee. Jayne started as he thought he saw something flicker in the shadows outside. He moved to the doorway of the infirmary, but upon closer inspection he found nothing. The engineer carried on talking, oblivious to Jayne's unease up on the bridge.

_"It doesn't have anythin' that can help us out really, just says where this thing's been seen before. And…looks like everyone died whenever they did."_

"Well, they weren't us," said Mal as he entered the infirmary. "And sounds like we've already got a better idea on what's what than they did already. What's wrong, Doctor?"

Simon looked up from his console. "The chief examiner on the Independent base wrote this report. Considering he knew nothing of what was happening, he made some fairly competent guesses in the right direction.

"There was a black smudge on the scans of the men in the room we found. At first, he thought it was a malfunction, but when it appeared on all four scans, and after he had ordered a diagnostic ran on the scanner and found nothing wrong with it, he began to suspect something was amiss."

"Four scans?"

"That's the next point. There were originally four men recovered from Captain Harvey's ship. The chief examiner ordered a sample withdrawn from the smudge on one of the men, but he died almost instantly afterwards. An autopsy revealed the presence of, and these are the exact words from the report, an undeveloped extra-terrestrial."

"An alien?"

"That seems to be the popular theory," nodded Simon, looking for all the 'verse like he was disgusted by what he was saying. "Personally, I think that the examiner was flirting with sensationalism by using that particular choice of words, however there is some truth in it. No life form like this has been discovered in all of the worlds we've settled on. Although I wouldn't use the term 'alien,' it's a close approximation."

"What happened to the fourth man?"

"Looks like some kind of internal haemorrhaging. When they cut into the creature inside of him, it burst with some kind of acidic substance. It burned him alive from the inside out."

"Outta all the words everyone's been yappin'," said Jayne, "None of 'em is tellin' me what I wanna know."

"And what's that, Jayne?" asked Mal, trying his best to be patient.

"How we're gonna kill it without tearin' a hole in the gorram hull."

Simon shrugged. "The airlock seems to be a safe option. Shooting it is a bad idea, as is stabbing it or otherwise rupturing its skin."

"Well, we gotta find it first," said Mal, who was beginning to realise the potential hiding places even his small ship afforded such a creature.

"Finally," muttered Jayne, relieved the talking was over. Mal, however, wasn't finished.

"Kaylee, see if you can find anythin' about Blue Sun in those files. I wanna know exactly how they ended up with that crate, and how it ended up in our hold. Somethin' still ain't adding up, and I need to figure out which of their officials I'm gonna tear a new…"

He trailed off, listening to something. A faint noise had disturbed his train of thought.

_"Cap'n?"_ asked Kaylee, but he didn't answer her immediately, instead listening intently to his surroundings.

There it was again! A faint disturbance coming from above. Almost like…something was being dragged.

His eyes widened, and he broke for the door, running at full speed up the stairs. He rounded the corner into the doorway of the mess to see Harvey's feet disappearing around the side of the opposite door, being pulled by an unseen force. He ran to try and get a look at that force, but his old compatriot's corpse was yanked out of sight, and he heard the sound of it tumbling down metallic stairs.

As soon as he reached it, he wrenched the hatch to the stairs closed, and barked into his earwig. "Jayne, shut the door to the ruttin' cargo bay!"

Beneath him, the unruly mercenary dived from the infirmary and up the short flight of stairs, reaching the hatch just as the sight of something large and fleshy hitting the deck inside reached his eyes. Something small and…well, like the doc said, alien jumped atop of it, but Jayne grimaced and heaved the door closed, sealing it once it had slammed to.

Mal bounded up behind him, and started to call excitedly. "We've got it! Vent the cargo bay!"

Jayne got caught up in the excitement and pushed the control that would open the seal to the bay, letting in the vacuum of space. After several moments of blissful ignorance of reality, he realised that depressing the button repeatedly wasn't doing anything. He turned to Mal, uncomprehending. His captain's face was suddenly grim.

"The dorsal cluster," said Mal, bitterly disappointed and cursing himself for forgetting the vital piece of information in the heat of the moment. "The power to the bay is out."

"So…?" asked Jayne, peering into the cargo bay through the small window in the door. The creature was tearing small pieces of flesh from Harvey's body with its jaws. Jayne grimaced at the sight.

"So it means that we're stuck with our new friend for a little while longer."

The creature – the alien – suddenly looked up, as if sensing its observers. It seemed to look straight at them, and that eyeless, faceless head was more than enough to unnerve Mal. He almost felt Jayne shudder beside him.

It bounded away from the corpse and sought refuge among the few crates that were still left inside the bay, a captive in the enclosed space, but safe for now.

_**Next on Void**_

_"**What now…?"**_

_Thanks to Tyramir, MAndrews, epm0001 and mbali for your reviews. I hope this chapter plugged the gaps for anyone who might have doubted the mesh of the two verses, and I'm glad the new development was well received! This would have been updated much earlier had the document uploader actually uploaded properly. But go figure, it didn't._

_Edit: Had to update this when half of the italics exported with the original file, and half reverted to normal text! Something very strange is going on with the uploader... _


	10. Transition

Almost as soon as they had established that they were stuck with their new guest indefinitely, a klaxon sounded throughout the ship. Mal clenched his teeth and cursed under his breath.

"What now…?" he asked. He pointed a finger at Jayne. "You stay here, and you keep an eye on that thing. If it moves, I wanna hear about it."

"What? Why do I have to keep an eye on it!" he asked plaintively, and with perhaps a slight hint of fear.

"Cause you're the one with the grand plan of throwin' it out of the airlock, so you can be the one to save our hides when we figure out how to get power back into the cargo bay," said Mal in a no-nonsense tone of voice, marching up the corridor. "I mean it Jayne – if it breathes, I wanna hear about it," and then he was gone up the stairs.

With his absence, the common area took on a sudden malevolence. Jayne leaned against the bulkhead, slightly uneasy about being left alone down with the creature. Everything suddenly seemed oppressive and, despite the klaxon, too quiet. Then, curiosity overcame his agitation and he peered slowly through the window to the cargo bay.

"Does it breath?" he whispered to himself. But the creature was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

"What the hell is goin' on?" barked Mal.

"You wanna list?" murmured Kaylee as she hurried past him, only to disappear under the pilot's console almost immediately afterwards.

"Yes, if it isn't too much trouble," said Mal, except he wasn't joking.

Zoe straightened by where she operated the nav console. "We've got an electrical fire that started in the dorsal cluster, we're drifitn' towards a moon, the Alliance is on our tail and we got a dead body in the mess with a little nasty sittin' in the cargo bay."

Mal raised his hand at Zoe, as if it would stem the tide of calamities coming from her mouth. "The body's in the cargo bay with the dead guy now. Explain each of those points."

"In small words, if possible," muttered Inara, but a look from Mal silenced her – now clearly wasn't the time.

"The fire? Probably after effects of whatever that monster leaked into the ship. It's what caused the alarm. As for the moon," and she turned to point at the screen to emphasise. On it, a small dot represented Serenity and a larger blob of colour signified the presence of a planetoid. "When we shut down the engines, we didn't thrust back in the opposite direction to stop us. We've been driftin' since, and we're gettin' pulled into this moon's gravity well. Then, the Alliance put out a warrant for our capture for a very large sum of money, and the last two points I think you're okay with."

"Can't we slow down?"

"No cap'n, we'd need both engines to do that properly. The way we are, we'd just end up driftin' more towards the moon if we fired the other engine."

"How long before we hit atmo of this moon?" demanded Mal.

Zoe shrugged, looking almost completely unfazed by these newest developments. "Hard to say. We've got a few hours, but past that I can't be sure."

"Okay. Someone get down to that dorsal cluster, put out that fire. Last thing we need after all we been through is to choke to death on some smoke."

Kaylee and Inara exchanged a hesitant glance, and after a few seconds Mal realised that no one was rushing to fulfil his order. His expression hardened and he drew a breath to crack down on those assembled on the bridge, but Zoe caught him in the nick of time.

"I'll go. Be right back sir," she said, and left. Mal took in the slightly abashed remaining two women.

"It's locked up in the cargo bay," he said, attempting to be reassuring. "You don't have to be afraid of it anymore."

Kaylee looked at him evenly. "If it's all the same to you, cap'n, I think I'll stick with bein' scared witless. Not that I can help it."

Mal shook his head slightly, dismissing the course of the conversation. "Any more luck on those files?"

She nodded and gestured towards where River still sat, almost happily decoding the classified reports. "River's makin' good progress with 'em."

"Update me."

"Well, there's nothin' on how to kill them 'cept somethin' we know and somethin' we don't have. Says they killed the first one by blowin' it out the airlock, then they killed a nest of 'em by nukin' it."

He nodded. "Okay, brings us back to gettin' power to the cargo bay. You reckon you can rig somethin' up?"

She pursed her lips and pondered the problem, staring out – literally – into space.

"I don't see how," she said finally. "That cluster regulated all of the power for those systems. If I rigged somethin' up that fed power straight into the bay, it'd probably blow something up and then there'd be no chance of getting' power back. They kinda design those clusters to never break. There's not much in buildin' a new one, save for buyin' one outright."

"See what you can do," said Mal, suddenly very aware of the restrictions moving in around them. "We need to get power back in that cargo bay. I don't care how you do it, but it needs to be done. You fix that cluster, we take care of two of our problems; we get rid of our new friend and we escape that moon's gravity. That only leaves the Alliance, and you can leave that for me to worry about."

Kaylee nodded, still looking despondent, but Mal couldn't think of anything else to say. Instead, he squeezed her shoulder and gave her as reassuring a look as he could manage.

"We're gonna get through this."

The look she gave him spoke volumes, but obviously the mechanical cogs that must be inside Kaylee's head were still whirring as she did.

"I think…I think I can solve our gravity issue," she said, frowning slightly.

"Go on," said Mal, afraid that saying anything else might disrupt whatever thought pattern she was having.

"We can just swing her around," she said. "If we reverse course, then the engine'll be pointin' in the other direction. It'll swing us away from the moon."

Mal felt slightly cheated, expecting a more complex solution to the problem. "Will that work?"

"Yeah," said Kaylee, becoming more animated each second she spent thinking about it. "I mean, we'll have to fire the engine as low as we can get it, but we'll turn around before we crash."

"Won't that take us closer to the moon?"

"Yeah, but that's why we burn the engine real slow. By the time we get anywhere, we'll be all turned around and we can fire it up full."

Seeing no obvious, fatal drawbacks and more importantly, no viable alternatives to this plan, Mal nodded assertively. "Make it happen," he said.

* * *

"This is incredible," muttered Simon.

The medical readouts were telling him things that he could only have dreamed about. A creature with an exoskeleton that looked as tough as diamond, concentrated acid for blood and the most bizarre reproductive cycle he had ever seen in another species.

In the first instance, something that size should collapse in on itself with an exoskeleton, but the creature – he refused to use the term 'alien' – seemed quite robust last he saw. Similarly, with such a fluid inside it, it should liquidate itself but the exoskeleton somehow contained it. And finally, there seemed to be two separate creatures; the first Andrews' crew encountered in the crate, and the second was trapped in the cargo bay.

He frowned. What if there was something past the stage they had seen? That was something they hadn't considered. And where did these eggs come from? Simon wished he had a sample of the first creature, to see how exactly it implanted the second creature into a host. And more than that, he wished to see the environment that spawned such an evolution of animal. Surely it would be more feasible for the first creature to gestate, like a cocoon, and give birth to the second itself?

Simon abruptly stood from the readout, and passed a weary hand over his eyes. He was getting too absorbed in this. He could suppose until Doomsday, but the fact remained that his first priority was to figure out how to safely kill it. No other factor could distract him from his work.

But…the way it had hissed at him in the mess. It almost seemed like it was…_aware,_ somehow. He knew it was ridiculous, but the chill that had rippled down his spine when the creature…well, it seemed like it had been looking at him. Right at him. And for a being without eyes, or any other visible sensory organs for that matter, that was quite an accomplishment.

The way River had reacted to it was strange, to say the least. She said…something about it talking to her without saying anything. Maybe this was why she had been acting so strangely these past few days. Maybe the creature was having some kind of latent psychic effect on her. He resolved to talk to her about it later. He frowned, reconsidering. Maybe it would be better if he asked Inara to speak with her. The Companion might have a better chance of reaching what River was really thinking through this program of meditation she had started.

A faint rustling behind him interrupted his thoughts. His eyes widened, and he whirled around, expecting to be met with flashing teeth and claws.

"Quit bein' so jumpy, Doc," said Jayne. Simon sighed and the tension floated from his body.

"Don't creep up behind me, then," he returned, and Jayne just dismissed his words with an uncaring expression.

"Found a way to kill it yet?"

Simon all but glared at Jayne. "Not yet. And my research will proceed faster without any distractions."

"Oh, don't mind me," said the unwelcome guest, and Simon snorted.

"I try not to." He paused for a moment, realising something. "Aren't you supposed to be keeping an eye on…it?"

Jayne shrugged, stepping fully into the infirmary. "It ain't goin' nowhere. It's gone where I can't see it anymore. Way I figure it, Kaylee'll have the power back up 'fore you can spit and we'll just crack open the bay."

"That's less than reassuring."

"It's how it is, Doc. Best get used to it."

"Well, I'll leave you to philosophise while I continue with my research." He sat down at the display monitor, but Jayne failed to take the hint. He looked up at the intruder of his privacy. "In separate habitats from each other?" Still nothing. "Get out."

"Alright Doc, keep your britches on…"

Several hours passed while the crew worked in nervous anxiety, expecting something awful to jump out at them from a dark corner, or for another klaxon to sound. Their energy was wasted; Serenity drifted closer to the moon, the Alliance closed in on them, and the research bore no further mysteries. The ship moved around slowly to face the opposing direction, but the quiet that had descended on Serenity was more than enough to unnerve.

Finally it was broken when some small fragment of code appeared on Kaylee's screen, sent to her by River. The engineer bolted excitedly to the doorway of the bridge and hollered for the others to join her.

Mal bolted up the stairs, through the mess and onto the bridge in record time, Zoe right behind him. He spent several seconds scanning the bridge with his eyes, trying to figure out what was wrong, but Kaylee just grabbed his arm and led him to the display.

He visibly deflated as he allowed her to drag him. "Gorram it, Kaylee, I nearly died back there."

"You won't be disappointed, Cap'n," she said. She tapped the screen. "I found somethin' that might help us out finally."

"What is it? What about the engines?"

"Oh, we're nearly turned around, give her a few more minutes. But this," she tapped the screen, "Is what I got all excited about."

A mugshot glared from the screen at Mal, greasy blonde hair perched above piercing blue eyes. The man's craggy features made him look a little like an ape, but something in the his expression alluded to a sinister intelligence. In all, Mal got the distinct impression that he would rather not run into this man, whoever he was.

"Who is he?" asked Zoe, echoing Mal's thoughts. "I don't see a name." She was right; most of the fields on the profile were blank, and upon closer examination the ones that were filled in were approximate guesses; age, between thirty five and forty; height, approx six feet; etcetera.

"Don't know," said Kaylee proudly. Mal eyed her inquisitively, not needing to ask the question for she elaborated without. "And neither do Blue Sun. There's a whole section of this file devoted to him, and they don't even have a name for him."

"An Operative?" asked Zoe, her eyebrows raising. Kaylee nodded.

"Looks like."

"What's an Operative doing wrapped up in all of this?" asked Mal mostly to nobody, for he was already processing the answer in his mind. The Alliance was evidently more aware than they were letting on about the entire business with the crate, and must have assigned one of their men to keep an eye on the situation.

"No idea, but ain't that the point?" responded Kaylee. "Probably not even he knows his real reason for bein' there."

"Why does Blue Sun have a file on him?" asked Zoe.

"To watch the watcher," said River, not looking up from her work. Her statement caused those present to skip a few seconds as they subconsciously assessed River's words, to establish them as either crazy talk or valid statement.

"They must be involved somehow." Kaylee was the first to speak.

"Well, isn't this good news?" Mal asked sarcastically, folding his arms pensively.

"Not especially," said Inara from across the bridge. "Remember how you looked after your last encounter with an Operative?"

"Hey, I kicked his ass."

"You also had three broken ribs and a concussion."

"Well…yeah, but you didn't see the other guy."

"How does this help us?" asked Zoe, cutting off the exchange before it degenerated.

"We got a face to track down now," said Mal. "Shame we got nothin' else with it, but it's a start."

Kaylee had moved away and was busily working the console at the rear of the bridge. "Well, none of that'll matter if we crash into this moon. Gettin' ready to fire the engine up full. I need to be in the engine room."

Mal nodded. "Zoe, go with her. Might be more work than one pair of hands can do."

Neither woman acknowledged the real reason he didn't want Kaylee in the engine room on her own.

Mal stepped closer to Inara, who was busying herself with some task that surely must be important to be attracting so much of her attention.

"So…uh, how are you farin'?"

River spoke calmly from her console. "I can feel it clawing at what's left of my sanity."

There was a moment of stunned silence before Mal said anything.

"Well, that was creepy."

"What do you mean, River?" asked Inara, genuinely concerned. She had seen a glimpse into River's mind, and what she had seen there wasn't pretty. For River to be as composed as she normally was, she had discovered, was a miracle. Anything threatening that was not a good thing.

The Companion knelt next to River's chair, and the girl's liquid brown eyes seemed to drink up Inara's soul as she met her gaze.

"It's nothing I can read. I carry the thoughts and minds of all I meet inside me. But the Void has no thoughts. Yet I can feel it inside of me." She spoke in short, clipped sentences in a soft, sedated voice, as if she were voicing how it felt to fall asleep. She gazed to the deck, apparently exhausted by this exchange.

Inara looked worriedly to Mal, who could only return the look. He wanted to help River, but this was more the Companion's area of expertise than his own. He'd probably just make the damned situation worse anyway.

"_We're finished back here,"_ called Kaylee from the intercom, and Mal took the pilot's chair. The atmosphere of the moon was starting to burn around the ship. It was a good job they were facing the other direction, because if Mal had to look at the surface of the moon so up close, it might effect his performance. They were cutting this one close.

"Ready to burn when you are," he replied.

"_You've got a go from us."_

"Okay then, thrusting in five, four, three, two…one…"

He engaged what was left of the ship's engines, and Serenity lurched forward, upsetting the balance of the artificial gravity for a moment. He could feel the ship straining against its momentum, trying to break free of the force that its own engines had created.

* * *

Simon looked up while the ship shuddered, and then relaxed when he realised it was all part of the plan to escape the gravity of the moon they were rapidly approaching.

Jayne snorted and sat up in the chair just outside, shaking his head and blinking repeatedly. Simon's jaw dropped open as he stood and moved to the doorway.

"What were you…were you _asleep?_"

"What? No! I was, uh, restin' my eyes," said Jayne, jumping up from the chair. Then he gathered his wits about him enough to immediately abandon the pitifully thin defence and launch a counterattack. "You could'a woke me up."

Simon almost physically recoiled, so aghast he was at Jayne's actions.

"I forgot you were even _out there_!"

Jayne shrugged, as if the matter were settled. "Well then, I hope you can learn from this."

Simon blinked, incredulous. "What…? No! I've been researching! What have you been doing? Who's been keeping an eye on the cargo bay?"

Jayne seemed to have forgotten his original task, and reality hit him when Simon spoke. He ran from the common area and up the stairs to the cargo bay door. He pressed his face to the glass and something massive and black sprang from his view up onto the gangway. His eyes grew wide in his head.

"What in the good gorram…?"

* * *

"_How we doin', cap'n?"_

"Give it a few more minutes. We're still driftin'."

Inara smiled faintly, allowing herself a small amount of optimism to leak through the anxiety. Certainly, there were obstacles on the ship, and that small, white circle on the horizon was an Alliance cruiser rushing towards them, but as she had been taught as a girl; take one problem at a time, and no more. Worrying about everything at once was counter-productive. Their immediate task was to escape this moon's gravity, and they were on the threshold of accomplishing that.

She squeezed River's shoulder reassuringly, trying to force her good feeling onto the girl over whatever mental link she made with other people, but she didn't respond to it. Positively.

"There's a darkness coming," she said quietly, still staring at the deck. Mal turned in the pilot's chair and smirked at her.

"Always is, li'l albatross." He turned back, taking in the view of the stars that reached out endlessly before him. "But as always, we're gonna stay one step ahead of it, or meet it head on; beat it at its own game. Remember when the Alliance tried it? We took that signal and shoved it up their…"

And then the power died.

"Oh. Right. Darkness."

_**Next on Void**_

"…_**What do you mean…'gone'?"**_

_Thanks to MAndrews, WilliamD-000 and Tyramir for your reviews. I really appreciate it, guys!_


	11. Death

"Mal!!" came the cry from down below. Frantic footsteps clanged up to the mess through the sudden darkness of the vessel and through to the bridge to reveal Jayne – closely followed by Simon – as the source of the disturbance. The ship was suddenly a hive of activity; Kaylee was screaming expletives from all the way back in the engine room, her voice crackling with static over the intercom, probably trying to figure out exactly what went wrong. Jayne was a flurry of nervous anxiety, babbling an explanation Mal couldn't make sense of over Simon's infuriated cries. Inara tried to sooth the two men, to no avail.

Mal stood there for precisely five seconds before he took charge of the situation.

"_Enough!"_ he bellowed, and his crew immediately obeyed, lapsing into silence. Something in his eyes warranted no argument; the situation had pushed Mal to the limits of his patience, and he was teetering on the edge of it. He drilled into Jayne with his eyes.

"What is it?"

Jayne blinked, gulped slightly and adjusted his collar. "Uh…it's gone."

The absence of light seemed, at that moment, to give life to the absolute silence that filled the room almost physically. When Mal spoke, it was quietly, and very dangerously.

"…What do you mean…'gone'?"

Jayne seemed to sweat a little, and shifted from foot to foot. "It ain't in the cargo bay no more."

The ramifications of what he said sunk in; Inara leaned against the nearest console, and Simon completely deflated from his angry rage, as if he hadn't considered what Jayne's mistake had meant to them until just now.

Mal didn't say anything, because Jayne hadn't finished.

"It's…uh…it's bigger."

"How much bigger?" asked the captain.

Jayne's eyes were hollow with disbelief at what he had witnessed through the window of the cargo bay door.

"A _lot_ bigger."

That took a few moments to sink in.

"I take it the thing went through the wall with the main power conduits?" asked Mal, still icily calm. Jayne nodded an affirmative. Mal considered this.

"Kaylee," he called to his box-like personal intercom. Kaylee should have hers in the engine room, and if the main power conduits were blown then they were the only things left on the ship that would have power. "What kinda repairs can we make to the ship to get her power again?"

The answer was hesitant, but almost immediate. _"Uh…nothin'."_

"Nothin'? You've fixed her when she was broke a thousand times before now. Hell, she's been flyin' on nothin' but spit and polish for the past six months. You could keep this ship in the air by thinkin' it, and you're tellin' me there's nothin' you can do to fix her up again?"

_"…Yeah. Cap'n, this ain't some trinket I can cook up a replacement part for with a kitchen knife and a coat hanger. It's the main power conduit. They don't break, ever. If somethin's broken the line, there's nothin' I can do. Maybe I could've fixed the dorsal cluster with time, but…it's like cuttin' up somethin's heart and expectin' it to keep on tickin'. It can't be done."_

"C'mon, Kaylee. I've heard this talk from you before. There's somethin' you can do, and you've got less than an hour to think it up. So I'd get on it."

_"Yessir."_

"Zoe, stay with her. Anythin' nasty comes knockin' on the door, you answer it with violence, you got it?"

_"Aye."_

Mal turned to gaze out of the forward cockpit viewport. The Alliance ship was much bigger now; they must be pushing their engines to the limit to catch up with them. He turned the situation over and over in his head, trying to figure out a way through it. His ship had no power…the creature was loose on it…and the Alliance were, judging by the distance involved, less than an hour away…and they were gonna crash into a moon way before that.

Nothing immediately hit him except the imminent loss of his vessel. He knew it, deep down in his gut. Serenity was dying. Just like Kaylee said, this monster had cut out her heart, and now she lay lifeless in space, doomed to the mercy of whatever gravity held her. He knew it better than Kaylee did. If that thing _had_ gone through the main power conduit, there was nothing they could do to fix it; it was the one part of the ship that simply didn't break, that the rest of the ship was built around. Hell, even when they were constructing a ship, they started with the power conduits in the same way a foetal human begins with the beating of cardiac cells.

This was how he arrived at his next course of action. He turned back to the others, who had remained silent, allowing him to brood.

"I need to see it."

"I dunno where it went," said Jayne.

Mal shot him a glare. "Not the creature, you chou ma niao. The gaping hole in my ship." Not waiting for a response, he stormed to the hatch of the bridge before Inara caught up to him, grabbing him by the arm.

"Mal…that thing is still out there," she said, and Mal just shook her hand free of its grasp.

"I know," he said, and marched out off the bridge, not even bothering to check around him for the monster. All emotion had left him now; all that mattered was making sure that Serenity was okay.

As he marched through the mess, a part of him marvelled at how composed he was under the circumstances. Occasionally he had considered what he would do if the unthinkable were to happen to Serenity on cold, lonely nights in his bunk. The ship had sheltered him and his, gave them a chance to live free of the oppression of the Alliance. Sure, he might have bitched about it at the time but even River and Simon had carved out a place here, finding refuge when the all-seeing eyes of the Alliance were seeking them out. Kaylee had found her independence here, and he and Zoe had found the same thing, although they had needed it for very different reasons. Even though she would never admit it to him, Mal had seen the affection in Inara's eyes when she talked about her shuttle, and even Jayne showed marginal signs of putting down roots, in the way he had customised his bunk.

Speaking of whom, the big brute was clumsily trailing behind Mal as he strode down the steps to the infirmary and up to the entrance to the cargo bay.

"Mal, are you crazy?" he hissed, catching up to his captain, but Mal was just looking up at the bulkhead mounted above the gangway.

There was a vent that allowed manual tuning of the main power conduits; or rather, there had been before ten minutes ago. All that was left was a twisted hole that the creature had made, slipping through the confined space with strength, the cold, analytical part of Mal's brain filed away, that was beyond human.

He felt emotion seeping at his eyes, willing him to shed the tears his soul screamed for, but they were overridden by another drive; cold, hard rage. He trembled slightly as the loss finally sunk in; that the unthinkable had happened. Serenity was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it.

His thoughts swam with the memories of the ship; the same way a mind reacts when informed a close friend or loved one has passed away. The first look he took of the ship. Introducing Zoe to her. The crew assembled around the mess table, laughing at one of Book's stupid stories. Crawling through the corridors of the ship, a bloody hole in his side, spare part in his hand, trying to get the life support back online. Wash, in the pilot's chair, just before he died.

And finally he thought of the terrible moment in the elevator, back at Mr Universe's place, riding back up after broadcasting the signal that had crippled the Alliance. His momentary elation had evaporated when he had recalled Book's death, and Wash's murder. _Who else?_ he had thought. _Are there going to be any more corpses waiting for me? Who was going to be next to go?_

But now he realised that it had been the ship, who had protected them from the elements for so long, who had died next. They stood within a corpse, killed by a creature born from death.

His fist finally clenched, and he turned to look at Jayne. He received a timid glance in return.

He swung and caught Jayne right on the jaw, knocking the mercenary over and into a nearby crate. He pounced on him, raining blows onto wherever he could land them, venting his anguish and loss onto his man's stupidity.

"Where were you?" he cried. "I told you to keep watch, gorrammit!"

Jayne just lay there and took it, knowing somewhere within him that all of this was somehow his fault. Even a day ago he would have beaten Mal to a bloody pulp in retaliation, but some part of him that was rational and human saw that he could have prevented this; that he had been the one to destroy their home, and so lay there and received the physical and verbal abuse without complaint.

Finally, Mal rolled to the side, exhausted, and a single sob escaped him. His emotion had been vented, and now there was nothing left except the loss. Now he had nothing in all the verse. Nothing except the corpse of a ship and a crew with no home.

They lay there for a stretch of time that neither of them could measure before Jayne looked up.

"Ohh…" he said reflexively. "Mal…"

Mal, completely empty, looked up. And frowned.

A mound of biological matter clung to the ceiling above them, rising down towards them like a stalactite in a cave. It glistened with some kind of resin, slime coalescing into solid matter. Pieces of bone jutted awkwardly from the structure, and Mal looked to where Harvey's corpse was earlier and saw nothing. A smaller structure hung from the side of the first, ovoid in shape. While the large stalactite was a silky white colour, the smaller structure was shiny and black, and much harder looking.

"What is that stuff?" asked Jayne in a whisper.

"It's Harvey," replied Mal in a normal tone of voice. "It ate him up and spat him back out up there." Then, as if on a sudden impulse, he jumped to his feet and started yelling. "You hear me? I'm not afraid of you! You come and get me next, see where it gets you!"

There was no immediate response to this outburst, which galvanised Mal into further action. He almost ran out of the cargo bay and back up to the bridge, Jayne tagging along behind him. On his way, he picked up his pistol from the mess.

"What's the damage?" asked Inara.

"Everyone into the shuttles," said Mal, ignoring her completely. "We're abandoning the ship."

"What?"

"You heard me. The ship is toast," he said all too calmly, and then repeated his order. "Everyone into the shuttles. We're abandoning the ship."

"What do you mean, 'it's toast'? Surely it can't be that cut and dried?" asked Inara, shocked. Mal just looked at her evenly.

"It is. The main power conduit's gone. Ain't nothin' can fix that. Go ask Kaylee, she'll tell you the finer points, but you heard what she said."

"No!" said Inara. "I refuse to accept that. There must be _something_ we can do. There's always something."

"There ain't _nothin'_," said Mal, a little of his grief spilling over into his voice. Inara's eyes widened, seeing that beneath his calm exterior boiled a sea of emotion. "We're getting off this thing. And that's it. We don't have any time; we're gettin' closer and closer to that moon and there's gonna be a big bang when we hit it. I don't wanna be on this thing when we hit surface, and I don't want you to be either. So let's go."

He moved to the doorway, loading his pistol. Suddenly he turned and saw Kaylee and Zoe jogging towards him. Kaylee's eyes were full of grief; full of the knowledge of having to say something she really, really didn't want to say. Zoe stood reassuringly behind her.

"Cap'n, we gotta…we gotta abandon the ship," she said, tears shining in her eyes. Mal grabbed her shoulder, reassuringly gruff.

"Way ahead of you, girly," he said. "C'mon, everyone to the shuttles!" His mind was working again, more focussed on the crisis rather than the situation.

He pushed everyone through to the corridor, the ship listing slightly as it started being pulled towards the moon.

"Ya'll have precisely thirty seconds to gather up your things; hop to it, people."

The enclosures to everyone's bunks, having popped open automatically with the power failure, allowed those with rooms up here to descend into them. Inara suddenly broke from the group and headed down through the mess hall.

"Inara!" called Mal, heading after her. Jayne, whose only possessions he cared about were in the mess hall, watched them both pass with a sort of bemused disbelief.

"What the hell are you doin'?" cried Mal, trying to catch up to the Companion. She was at the bottom of the stairs before he had gone down halfway, plunging headfirst into the darkness.

"I need to get River's medication," she said, entering the common area. "I won't let her live through what she does without some kind of help!"

"We don't have time for this!" called Mal, and Inara turned to look at him.

She gave him her most resolute, self-assured stare. "I'm making the time," she said.

The darkness behind her became physical, extending towards her with terrible, jet-black limbs. They looped around her body, sweeping her off the ground and smothering her mouth before she could even scream. Her eyes were the only things Mal could see, widening as if they were trying to put forth that burst of noise on behalf of her mouth.

"_Inara!"_ he cried, going to run forwards towards her as she disappeared into the blackness surrounding him. But suddenly Jayne was there, grabbing him by the arms and dragging him backwards.

"Mal, she's gone!" he roared into the captain's ear, fighting with the struggling man. He let go with one hand and jabbed Mal in the throat with his extended fingers. Mal went limp in his arms, stunned by Jayne's attack, allowing the mercenary to finish dragging him up the stairs.

The rest of the crew crowded around the doorway to the mess, their eyes frantic. Jayne nodded quickly at Zoe, who took control of the situation in Mal's stead.

"Let's move, everyone!" she shouted, and there was a mass exodus towards the shuttles.

Mal was blinking, some of his senses restoring themselves. He expected to wake up any second, but the harsh reality of life stayed solid around him.

How had this happened? His ship was dead, Inara was…gone. How had everything gone so badly wrong in such a short amount of time?

His eyes darkened. That thing. The alien. The Void, as River had taken to calling it. It had popped out of Harvey and destroyed everything he had left to care about. It was evil incarnate, and Mal was going to make it pay. And he knew exactly how he was going to do that.

Jayne felt some of the strength flow back into Mal and he allowed the Captain to start to walk on his own, Mal coming up to run alongside him as they mounted the stairs leading to the entrance to the shuttle. He felt himself being evaluated, but apparently he passed Jayne's visual scan without raising any alarms.

They reached the entrance to the secondary shuttle, Zoe pushing Kaylee inside, followed by Simon. Jayne vaulted inside of his own volition.

Zoe went to mount the stairs into the smaller craft, but paused when Mal made no move to join her. She glanced back at him, puzzled.

"Sir?"

Mal was staring at her almost blankly, a faint smile on his face. "It's okay," he said quietly. "Four to a shuttle. You know the rules."

There was a commotion behind Zoe, and Jayne shouted something that was just inaudible. She turned, torn between going to resolve the ruckus and trying to convince Mal to come with them. She turned back to him, anguished.

He nodded. "It's okay," he repeated, entirely calm. "I'll be up behind you. You need to leave, now."

She held his gaze for a few long moments, the deck tilting more to the side. One of the bulkheads popped with the change of gravity pulling it.

"Hear that? It's the old girl's curtain call. Came outta nowhere, didn't it? Seems like two minutes ago we were…" He broke away from his sentence, unwilling to draw Zoe into a conversation. She seemed to understand at last.

"Sir…"

"Like I keep sayin', it's okay. I'll take care of things here. You need to take care of the others. Tell them that…" He paused, looked away, tried to find the words. Finally he smirked ever so slightly and shrugged helplessly. "Just tell 'em, okay?"

She nodded slowly, sadness creeping into her normally stoic expression. Another yell from behind her. Mal jerked his chin at the shuttle.

"Guess that's your final call. Take care, Zoe."

"It's been an honour, Sir," she said. But then she frowned, counting something in her head.

"Wait…where's…?"

A blur of motion shot forward, shoving Zoe back over the threshold into the shuttle. It hit the switch for the manual override and the shuttle hatch swung shut. The docking clamps released and the smaller vessel started to rise from Serenity's hull.

For a few seconds he stood, absorbing the silence that was all that was left of the ship. Then he looked at the cause of the blur.

"Guess she caught on, huh?" he commented wryly. River shifted slightly in the darkness in front of him, looking at him with knowing eyes, almost accusing him.

"You're not going to use the other shuttle."

He shrugged, held his hands up. "Ya got me. Guilty as charged. You do realise the only way to get out on the shuttle is by activatin' the manual override outside. One of us is gonna have to stay, and it ain't gonna be you, and it ain't gonna be Inara. Granted, I hadn't planned on you stayin' behind, but there's room in my plan for change."

"This selfless nobility isn't befitting a rogue," she said loftily.

In other circumstances he might have feigned offence at being referred to as noble or selfless, but with River it was more or less defunct. She knew what he was thinking, so there was no need to communicate it with words; or as was more Mal's style, cover it up with false bravado.

"She's still alive," said River, and a small ray of light shone from the middle of Mal's beaten heart.

"That was kind of central to me staying behind; thanks for clearin' it up."

"Aren't you going to ask me why I stayed?"

He shrugged again. "Figure you'd tell me if I needed to know."

River almost smiled. "Oh, you'll need to know."

What was left of Mal's tattered emotional core sent a chill that travelled right up his spine.

"I belong here," she said. "With It."

"The Void," said Mal; not a question. River nodded slowly, looking away as if feeling another input than her own to her mind. The sedated look they had become so accustomed to over the past week washed over her face. _The creature,_ he realised. _It's up in there, inside her head._ "You and I gonna have a problem here, girly?" he asked warily.

River shot him a look. "Not as long as you stay out of my way," she said. Abruptly she turned and plunged into the darkness that blanketed the ship, and Mal was left alone.

"Huh. Well…that was…huh."

He stepped to the small port that afforded a view of outside. The ship was inside the moon's atmosphere now; had been for a while. They had suffered the power failure inside it, so he didn't have to worry about burning up. He figured he had maybe five minutes before the winds started to shake the ship.

He stepped back onto the walkway proper, and a small, ever so slight sound made him look over his shoulder. A wall of solidified blackness blocked his vision, teeth and claws flashing towards him in a chilling display of a totally silent predator.

He had just enough time to raise his arms to his face on reflex before the creature was upon him.

But he didn't feel its arms wrap around him, as it had grabbed Inara. Something whistled past his ear and the sound of something sharply cracking assaulted his ears; like a steel pipe hitting concrete.

"Go!" shouted River, bringing her weapon back down onto head of the creature. Mal saw he at least got the metal bar part right, but he was surprised to hear such a solid sound come from such a relatively frail looking creature. He cowered past River, his arms still raised to fend off blows from either the pipe or the Void, and the girl reigned blows down on the creature.

It hissed and whipped its tail at River, but she skipped away from it, dropping the pipe and heading down the corridor behind Mal. It lunged forward at her, and she bounced sideways, avoiding its grip. They danced like that for several more moments, and Mal realised why; where the Void lacked River's evasive grace, it had impenetrable defence. It could withstand any attack she could make, while only one swipe would finish River – if it could hit her.

Finally it tired of the game and rushed her but she vaulted up onto its back, grabbing its tail as it swung up to impale her.

"River!" shouted Mal, and the monster looked up long enough for River to pick up the bar from the deck. She swung it solidly into its…where its face would normally be, but it seemed undamaged.

"Go!" she called again, and Mal saw the insight into her earlier words. _Not as long as you stay out of my way._ She wanted him away, so she wouldn't have to worry about him. Ignoring the effect that thought had on his pride – and his selfless nobility – he turned and bolted from the corridor, bounding along the gangway until he emerged in the mess, trusting that River would be all right.

He wrenched at the door that had sealed the creature into the cargo bay, sweat beading on his forehead, trying to get the door open. The Void was _huge_. When had it grown to such a large proportion? Probably when Jayne was supposed to be keeping an eye on it, he thought bitterly, but then the hatch popped open, interrupting his thoughts. Down into the cargo bay next, for Mal knew exactly where he was going to find Inara.

"Oh my God," he whispered as he came into full view of the bay.

Inara hung from the large white…_cocoon_ he had seen earlier. It had wrapped her up inside it so only her face was visible. Her face was half covered in a yellow fluid that Mal didn't want to guess the identity of, and it stretched to where he could no longer see, down her neck. Her eyes were closed.

He ran forward, eager to free her of such an insidious prison. In the blackness of the ship, the white cocoon looked even sicklier. Mal felt his gore rise at the thought of what Inara was feeling right now. The deck now steeped at a twenty-degree angle, so if he leant out slightly off the gangway he stood on, he could reach the viscous substance that held Inara to the ceiling. Hesitating a moment, he plunged his hands into the mass and started ripping chunks of it away, the alien substance falling far down to the deck below them with noisy splats.

She stirred slightly and he silently thanked Buddha – on her behalf – that she wasn't already dead. But who knew what this alien was capable of; maybe it had put one of its spawn inside of her, like it did with Harvey. Mal quickly shut his mind from that possibility. It was too awful to consider.

Suddenly the ship lurched beneath him, and his feet swept off the gangway below. Only quick thinking allowed him to plunge both of his arms into the cocoon, affording him safety from plunging to his death.

The atmosphere, he realised. The winds were starting to buffet the ship. He had run out of time.

The g forces increased, tearing at his body, willing him to be released from his sanctuary; afforded by the monstrosity he was trying to kill. The plan had been to get off the ship before this had started, but the Void had ambushed them.

Just as his thoughts turned to River, impossibly, the power started to flicker back on around him, illuminating the cargo bay in a strobe effect. Something big and mechanical groaned to life in the heart of the ship, and the gravity pressing onto his body ebbed slowly away. His feet swung back to over the gangway and he dropped onto the cold steel, starting his work on freeing Inara again.

After several moments, something clanged into the hatch from the common area below him and his heart jumped a few beats in his chest; but a quick glance revealed River looking unblemished after her encounter with the monster.

"What'd you do?" he called, trying to kerb his anxiety by speaking as conversationally as possible, but it sounded wrong when it came out of his mouth.

"The automatic stabilisers," she replied, emoting the calm that Mal was striving to find. "I tore out the backup power supply for the life support. I don't think we need it any more."

"Good work."

"Yes. But it will only help us for approximately twenty seconds."

"What…River? What do you mean?" he asked, but she had wrapped herself around a nearby support. Mal cursed and sunk himself into the cocoon again, bracing himself for something.

The ship shuddered violently, almost shaking Mal loose of the web of resin. The cargo bay door beneath him groaned loudly, several rivets popping and water springing from them. A jet of water shot from the very bottom of the door, flooding the deck of the bay instantly. The lights flickered one last time and died again, the machine – the stabilisers – silenced from the impact.

River was bounced from her support, rolling to her feet just as soon as the ship had stopped juddering around. Her cold, analytical eyes swept the cargo bay, assessing the damage that had been caused by the impact. _Thank God we didn't hit land,_ thought Mal, and she looked up to him and nodded.

"Fortunate," she said. She moved to where the power conduits lay exposed to the environment and started to tear one of the sparking cables free from the bulkhead. The power was still being generated, but the Void had torn through the main regulators that moderated the use of power throughout the ship. What River was holding in her hand was the energy that had powered the ship up until now in its purest form; the last, dying breaths of the ship.

Mal continued to dig at Inara's prison while the cargo bay rapidly filled with water below him. The pressure increasing on his ears told him they were sinking at an equally rapid pace, and really needed to get off Serenity five minutes ago. The second shuttle should still function under the water; they would rise with a built in flotation device to be used in such an emergency, and then use the engines to reach orbit, and with any luck, the others.

With a loud, organic sucking sound, the cocoon released Inara and Mal staggered back with her sudden weight fully on him. She didn't wake up.

"River!" he called, but the girl suddenly glared up above, abandoning her task of freeing the power cable.

Before he could even guess what was happening, he was violently thrown from the gangway by a force beyond his comprehension; one second he was standing near the roof of the room, the next the air had been ripped from his body and he was under six feet of water. Inara had been torn from his grasp and he struggled to get his bearings so he could fill his empty lungs.

The back of his throat burned as he flailed around, and he touched metal beneath him. He pushed up with his feet and he mercifully erupted from the water, sucking oxygen into his beaten body.

"Inara!" he cried weakly – and in vain, because the Companion was surely still unconscious and under the water to boot. He took another breath and submerged himself, desperately scanning the murky depths for any sign of her.

Cargo containers obscured his view as they floated on the ever-rising surface, and his heart nearly burst when he caught sight of her still form, lying prone on the deck. He launched himself towards her and, one hand under each arm lifted her to the surface of the water.

Mal emerged to sounds he would never have thought would be coming from inside his ship. Water was pumping up from below him, churning up onto the surface in a violent, bubbling froth. Fuel was trickling from overhead, one of the lines obviously succumbing to the pressure of being beneath an ocean, and the black fluid was forming into pools on the surface of the water. Bulkheads were creaking, popping and groaning around him. One rivet burst free, clanging off the opposite bulkhead. More were inevitably soon to follow.

"What happened?" he called to River, who was somehow still standing in exactly the same place he had last seen her. A closer inspection revealed that she, too, was soaking wet, and this perversely made Mal feel a little better.

Her eyes met his, still appearing to be drugged. "The Alliance. They're dropping depth charges on us from orbit."

"What?" he exclaimed, horrified. "Why would they…?" but his question was cut off as he lost the strength in his legs and sank under the surface again. Not that it mattered. He could figure it out later.

He emerged once again, and for the first time thought to check Inara's neck with his fingers.

There was a weak pulse, but a closer inspection revealed she wasn't breathing.

"River!" he called, the water streaming from his hair into his eyes. He suddenly felt very weak, and was afraid he could no longer support both his and Inara's weight in the water. "Help me!"

But the girl didn't answer him. She just stared vacantly at the surface of the ocean inside the ship, apparently lost to the world. Mal flinched as the sparking power cable she had freed ignited a nearby pool of engine fluid in a pillar of flame. It spread rapidly across the surface of the water, illuminating the bay in an eerie, flickering light.

Then she looked darkly towards the cocoon, hooded eyes filling with a raw, animal emotion Mal couldn't identify. He heard something clang onto the gangway just below the organic, alien prison and knew what was in the bay with them.

_This is what she's been fighting,_ thought Mal with a sudden flash of insight. _We brought that thing on board the ship, and ever since – even before – it was here she's been acting strange. Sedated. Drugged. She's been feeling that thing's mind, trying to hold on to her humanity, and she's exhausted. It doesn't think, it only acts on instinct. It's been rubbing off on her, and now it's right here in the room with her. I'm on my own now._

The Void hissed above him, and Mal tracked its movement down the bulkhead and onto the gangway River was standing on. She made no move to intercept it, and within seconds it was right in front of her, River merely following it with her eyes.

Mal's guts loosened inside his body as it stopped just centimetres from her face, the rows of gleaming, dripping teeth practically scraping her face. But River just met its gaze – because it _was_ looking at her, eyes or no – without any fear or hesitation.

They stood there, the water bubbling up around Mal, the fire spreading across its surface, the bay filling with the cold, salty liquid, for several seconds before either of them moved. They started to sway side to side, and Mal had taken their distraction to start to swim towards a nearby strut that he deemed would support one person's weight. He needed to get something solid beneath Inara so he could pump the water from her lungs.

Abruptly River hissed at the Void and it retreated two steps away from her, as if it were afraid of her somehow. But then it erupted forwards, sweeping with its claws at River's head. She danced sideways and avoided the strike, kicking at its body. But she all but bounced off the creature's exoskeleton, so little damage she did.

Mal was nearing the strut when another spark fell in front of him, igniting the water around him. Cut off from the strut, he flailed backwards in an attempt to avoid the fire, but it licked at his body, searing his flesh. He cried out in pain and swam backwards with Inara clutched to him.

Suddenly he was struck by the intensity of the situation. He swam in a quick circle, sweeping the bay. The water now filled more than half of the room, the ship starting to list badly to the side. The flame was sweeping across its surface, cutting off any access to an escape route. The only way out left was – and he wasn't surprised in the slightest – where River was engaging with the Void.

But he could see another way out. The power cable that River had torn from the main conduit swung sparking from the ravaged remains. With the way the ship was listing, the cable could be easily reached from the water. Mal swam to it, bringing Inara along with him.

River pushed with all of her strength against the bulk of the Void, and miraculously it lost its balance. She leaped up and grabbed a support girder protruding above her and swung both feet into its body. It flew away from her and splashed loudly into the rapidly rising water.

Mal grabbed the cable as the Void thrashed to the surface just a few feet away from him. His guts did that loosening thing again. He swallowed his fear and looked directly at the thing that had taken away everything he cared about in life. He pushed Inara away from him, towards River, and he was glad when she took the initiative and pulled the Companion out of the water and onto the gangway. He cast his eyes towards River, and time seemed to slow around them, River holding his gaze for what seemed like an eternity. Some of the humanity seemed to return to her all of a sudden, and she shook her head.

"No!" she cried, and she was just an innocent crazy girl again. Mal smiled, but he couldn't feel his lips move.

"Things got messed up real quick, huh?" he said as roguishly as possible, and he realised their minds were somehow communicating, because he didn't speak the words aloud.

The water flowing into the ship trickled to a stop. The fire froze in mid-blaze, and the Void, most importantly, stopped in its rush towards Mal. It had to be less than ten feet away from him, and it looked like it was a strong natural swimmer. Its teeth gleamed in the firelight, and the water was streaming off its body like something metal. One of its claws extended forward, pre-empting the clutch of death it would soon inflict on Mal.

"This isn't the way it should be," said River, and Mal could just shrug as best he could inside a mental link. He supposed he should be disturbed by this event, but nothing seemed to surprise him any more. Maybe this is what it meant to be at the end – when life couldn't throw anything else at you that you'd be shocked by.

"Nothin' ever is, li'l albatross. You take care of yourself, y'understand?"

He took a final glance around the ship and decided that overall, he could be dying in a worse way. Serenity was going down, he was going with her and he was dragging the thing that killed her along for the ride. He even got to save the girl on the way.

He looked back at the monster coming for him and swallowed the fear that rose up from his stomach into his mouth, trying to escape in a sob that, once uttered, wouldn't let him stop. Shocked, no, but terrified? He was scared witless.

"Okay, girly," he said to River, his voice trembling slightly. "You let me do my thing now." He felt rather than saw River nod, and time started to flow back to normal around him.

The water splashed from the bulkhead, the flames started to rage again, and the Void surged forward for his neck.

He grimaced more than smiled, and just as the Void gained back its full momentum, he gripped the sparking power cable tighter in his hand.

"Goodbye," he said to no one in particular.

And plunged the cable into the water.

_**Next on Void **_

_**"I take it you know who I am?" **_

_Thanks to Angus Hardie, MAndrews and Tyramir for your reviews! And thanks to whoever added Void to the C2 group Firefly Fics. Because it wasn't me!_


	12. Close

Kaylee collapsed onto the couch that was housed inside Inara's shuttle, followed closely by Simon. Zoe had shoved them both inside with a strength neither of them was going to argue with, and then Jayne came bounding inside. Simon gave him a dark look, and then frowned all of a sudden.

"River," he said, moving to stand up. But Jayne grabbed his shoulder and forced him back down onto the couch.

"Nuh-uh, Doc," he said. "You ain't goin' nowhere."

Simon shoved Jayne's hand away from him and he stood up, getting right into the other man's face. "That was a double negative, you _moron_," he said fiercely. "Now get out of my way – I'm going to find my sister."

He pushed Jayne out of the way, and Jayne actually stumbled back – probably out of surprise more than anything else, expecting the doctor to give in without a fight. But he was quickly back on the ball, grabbing the doctor and shoving him back onto the couch with more force than was really necessary. Kaylee frowned; Jayne wasn't normally like this with members of the crew. He usually restrained himself more.

Simon, seething with anger, jumped up and punched at Jayne's face with an angry cry, but the bigger man grabbed his fist and forced him back down for a third time.

"Now you stay down!" yelled Jayne, his face seething with anger. Simon saw the raw emotion boiling inside of him, and followed Jayne's instruction. He glared up at the mercenary, knowing that if he couldn't beat Jayne physically, then there was another area in which he could certainly triumph against him.

"How does it feel?" he spat, studying Jayne's face closely. The other man shot him a look that tried to silence him, but Simon would not be put down verbally by someone he knew to be of inferior intelligence. He pressed the offensive, twisting the proverbial knife into Jayne's guts. "How does it feel to be responsible for all of this?" he demanded, and Jayne actually slapped him – a sharp blow with the back of his hand. Kaylee was up immediately between them, but Jayne pushed her away.

"What are you _doing?_" she cried, bewildered. Simon shot a look full of venom towards Jayne.

"Why don't you tell her, Jayne? Why don't you tell her why we're huddled in this scrap heap of a shuttle, cowering for our lives? That the ship that we used to call home is gone? Tell her, Jayne. Tell her!"

Jayne flew at Simon, yelling incomprehensibly. He dragged the doctor up by his shirt and pushed him away, and might have done something Simon might have regretted later when Zoe staggered backwards into the shuttle and the hatch slid shut.

The docking clamps rumbled beneath them, and almost immediately they were floating away from Serenity. Simon howled unintelligibly and ran to the hatch, as if he could somehow reverse the undocking process.

"River!" he called, as Kaylee helped Zoe to her feet. Jayne paced over on the other side of the shuttle, seething with anger. After a few moments Simon realised that the ship wasn't settling back down onto the docking clamps by his force of will alone, and turned to the only one among them who might know what had happened back on the ship.

"Where's River?" he asked of Zoe, halfway between accusing and pleading. Zoe met his eyes evenly.

"She's the one who pushed me onto this thing."

Simon bit his lower lip, and pressed his folded hands onto the back of his head. The feeling of complete and utter helplessness felt like his brains would try and vacate his skull through the rear. A sudden sense of floating hit him, as if this wasn't real.

_It isn't real,_ he realised. _An alien on board the ship? River opting to stay on board with it rather than escape with me? Impossible. Simply impossible._

It became the only logical explanation in his head; that this was some kind of dream – or at worst an elaborate hoax, perpetrated by the other members of the crew for some reason he was unable to fathom. It wasn't the first of April…it wasn't his birthday…he had gone on to start sorting a preliminary list in his head of wrongs he had done to the others that might possibly cause them to stage this kind of trick on him when he felt his cheek throbbing.

Then his fantasy floated away, and the real world hit him in the face like a sledgehammer. This was _real,_ this was _happening now._ River was on that ship with that monster, and there was no way he could get back to her. He slowly sank against the bulkhead, despair enveloping him.

But Zoe seemed to realise why he was slumping towards the deck and shot him a steadying look.

"The Captain's with her. He stayed behind to go and get Inara. She got grabbed by the thing we're runnin' from."

The implications of that sunk in. Was the Companion dead? Were River and Mal as good as dead for staying to mount a rescue? Simon saw the twisted logic inside his sister's mind; or rather, he thought he did. Inara had helped River begin to meditate and in return, she was going to rescue her from the clutches of the terrible creature lurking in the depths of the ship.

Although he didn't know his assumption was almost entirely wrong, he took some comfort in it. River was trying to do the right thing; she had protected him and was trying to protect Mal and Inara from coming to great harm. Simon knew better than most people she was more than well equipped to afford such protection.

But he didn't stand up. A great weariness gripped him, and he just sat there, slumped against the bulkhead, the two women's eyes focussed entirely on him.

Which is why they completely missed what Jayne did next.

The shuttle lurched under their feet and the hatch that led to the cockpit slid shut. Zoe was instantly up, hammering the control that would open the hatch under normal circumstances, but Jayne had locked it from the inside. She banged on the door, yelling at him to open it up, but she received no response.

Simon was startled from his reverie and moved to activate the intercom, but Zoe all but shoved him out of the way and did it herself.

"Jayne, open up," she commanded, but the other side of the transmission was dead. She tried again and received no response.

"What's he doing?" asked Kaylee, slightly bewildered by this series of events. Simon gave her an even look, not wanting to appear like he was deliberately attacking Jayne; merely imparting the facts in an unbiased way.

"Back on the ship, Mal told him to keep an eye on that creature. But…he fell asleep. He woke up when you activated the engines to escape the moon's gravity. And by then the creature had escaped."

"Gou niang yang de," said Zoe. "He thinks this is all his fault."

"Isn't it?" flared Simon, abandoning his pretext of neutrality. But Zoe had moved back to the intercom.

"Jayne," she said, and waited for a response that didn't come. "Jayne. It's Zoe. Listen to me. I know you think you're responsible for all this, but you ain't. I don't think so, anyway. I mean, fallin' asleep on watch was a pretty dumb thing for you to do, but d'you really think you could'a done anything if you'd seen it? Hell, it'd tear through you like butter if it's as big now as you said it is. I know you – you're tryin' to run from all this, and you're probably tryin' to figure out a way to get rid of us 'fore you dump the shuttle and run, hitch a ride on some other ship. But you're forgetting that the Alliance is lookin' for you now. Remember when Simon and River came to us? That's what you're facin' now."

There was a brief pause before Jayne finally responded. "They managed well enough, why not me?"

Simon looked as though he was going to say something, but Zoe cut him off.

"'Cause what they did is nothin' compared to what they're lookin' for you for. This is too big to them; the first alien life form they'll encounter. They're probably thinkin' of hundreds of ways to catch it and train it…and you're witness to their little secret. They aren't gonna let you go, and you can't hide from them. Think fallin' asleep's a stupid mistake to make? Try it when an Operative's lookin' for you. No, they'll string you up within a week. Trust me on that. You and I both know you ain't smart enough to outrun them."

Rather than take offence, Jayne sat in meditative silence for a few more moments.

"So…what's your plan? You gotta better idea?"

Zoe, admittedly, didn't. But she wasn't about to let Jayne know that. "'Course I gotta plan. The first step of it is you comin' outta that cockpit. I can't get us anywhere if you're all holed up in there."

There were a few more minutes of contemplative silence, and then finally, the hatch to the cockpit slid open and a subdued Jayne stepped out of it.

"Listen," he said. "I didn't…I didn't mean for it to – "

Zoe's fist smashed into his face, and he staggered back with the force of the blow. She followed his motion and viciously punched him again, not letting him regroup.

"_That's_ for ruinin' my life," said Zoe. "You're gorram lucky I didn't think it could get much worse, or you might be dead now." She hit him again. "And _that_ was just for the hell of it."

She marched into the cockpit and assumed the controls. Simon followed her while Kaylee stooped to help Jayne to his feet. A small amount of blood ran from his forehead where Zoe had split the skin. He felt it, winced, and then let Kaylee help him to the couch.

They didn't say anything for a while, but then Jayne tried to speak.

"I dunno…I mean, I never thought that…"

Kaylee silenced him. "C'mon Jayne. Zoe was right. It's not like you could'a stopped that thing if it came at you."

He gave her an almost appreciative glance, but she wasn't finished.

"But…I can't believe that you did it. I always thought you put on this tough guy act for show, and somewhere in there you really cared. But…fallin' asleep when you were meant to be watchin' that thing?"

Jayne was quick on the defence. "You just said that – "

"I know what I said. You couldn't have done anything if it came at you. But the fact that you fell asleep anyway. We were all countin' on you, Jayne. You let us down. Do you really not care?"

Jayne had never felt this way before. Always when he had messed up, it was never about him. He gave up Simon and River to the feds? So what, who were they to him at the time? But this was Serenity, his home for the longest time since he'd actually been home with his Ma. Normally he either didn't care enough about the people he betrayed, or someone else saw that he'd make the mistake and fixed it up before he even made it. Mal. Mal was always the one who was two steps ahead of the game. Mal always saw his betrayals, or his blunders, and accounted for them. This was Mal's fault. He could have checked on him, or came to look at the thing himself, but he just let him be.

He drew breath to say all of that to Kaylee, but the look in her eyes stopped his words.

She was disappointed. Not angry and apoplectic with rage, but _disappointed._ He'd rather Zoe hit him for hours than suffer the look in Kaylee's eyes right now. He wished he'd never come out of the cockpit; ran from his problems as he always did. But he was trapped by the look in the girl's eyes.

Suddenly it all came crashing down on him. He _should have_ stayed awake. He _should have_ taken things more seriously. He _should have_ taken responsibility for his own actions.

And then his conscience, which hadn't been taken out of its packaging since he was seven years old, assaulted him with the full force of its power. Tears actually filled his eyes, for the first time he could remember. _This was his fault._ Granted, had he stayed awake, the outcome probably would have been the same, but like Kaylee said; he should have tried. No wonder Simon and Zoe were so angry with him. If he were either of them, he would have shot him on the spot.

Finally he understood the apparently complex system of morals that governed Mal's actions. The man that had remained an enigma to Jayne since he met him unfolded before him. Mal simply didn't want to feel bad after whatever he did. That was as simple as it got. Mal didn't want to live with this feeling that raged inside of Jayne now.

If only he wasn't trapped on this speck of metal in space. He could have ran away from his feelings; even Serenity was big enough for that. He didn't want to have to deal with this.

Kaylee could obviously see that he was suffering some kind of feedback loop in his built in system of denial of responsibility, and put her arm around him. He leaned slightly towards her, and they sat there like that for a while; neither of them talking, but perhaps for the first time both of them understanding each other.

The shuttle rattled with a physical impact, shaking them from the shell they had constructed around them. Jayne stood, blinking and sniffing, and marched into the cockpit.

"What is it?" he said, but Zoe and Simon both ignored him. Kaylee joined him and after assessing the mood in the cockpit slapped the back of both of their chairs. They stopped what they were doing and looked around at her; Zoe incredulous, Simon surprised.

"Hey!" she barked. "There's not time for all of this! I'm thinkin' that was the Alliance cruiser that's been followin' us?" Zoe nodded mutely. "Well then, we got about five minutes before they rope us in with the grapple, and nobody's gonna help us but us. Put all of it behind you; there's just us four here now, and we gotta make it work."

Metallic objects streaked past the cockpit viewport down towards the surface of the moon. Zoe went to meddle with the controls, but Simon stopped her with his hand.

"No. They've got us now. Those were some kind of bombs, and I suspect they were targeted at Serenity. If we resist in any way then we could be next. Better to just let them take us and hope we can come to some arrangement with them."

Zoe looked as if she was going to fight, but Kaylee moved to support Simon.

"Simon's right," she said. "Right now we're the only ones who know what's on our ship and how to deal with it. They need us alive. Let's not aggravate them. We gotta keep it together until the Cap'n gets back with the others." She nodded to herself, to reassure herself that Mal was going to turn up any moment now in the other shuttle. She just had to keep the others rallied together until he did, and he could take over.

Zoe reluctantly surrendered the controls, and the shuttle was pulled in to the docking bay of the cruiser. When they felt the shudder that indicated they had landed, they all assumed a position around the couch, hands raised in the air and weapons on the padded surface they surrounded.

They each exchanged a glance with the other, silently giving reassurance and hope to the others, even Jayne. Kaylee had been right; whatever had happened in the past, they were in the grasp of the enemy now, and all they had was each other. If they didn't pull through this together, then they'd either face a long life alone, or failure. And neither option looked particularly agreeable to any of the occupants of the shuttle.

The hatch sprayed sparks and then collapsed in on its own weight, and the shuttle was filled with flashing lights and soldiers armed to the teeth screaming at them. Kaylee was forced to the ground and restrained with cold, metal cuffs, and she lost track of the others in the confusion.

The next thing she knew she was being hauled out of the shuttle and into harsh floodlight. Masses of soldiers swarmed around the shuttle, guarding engineers who scanned the surface with portable devices. A biohazard team was assembled nearby, and Kaylee wondered if the soldiers who had stormed the shuttle first knew they were so disposable as to not wear any protection whatsoever.

She was dragged into a corridor off the main docking bay and then forced to her knees and found herself in a line with the other three. Simon gave her as reassuring a glance as he possibly could under the circumstances, but then their attention was distracted by a sudden silence all around them.

Eerily, a single set of footsteps echoed down the corridor towards them, and Kaylee couldn't see for the crowds of soldiers around them who it was. But then his face floated into view. The greasy dirty blond hair. The piercing blue eyes. The ape-like, yet sinisterly intelligent face. The only thing different was that rather than scowling, as he had appeared on the readout back on Serenity, his features were lit by an almost warm smile. Kaylee felt icicles penetrate her stomach and spread their frostiness throughout her torso. It was the Operative they had found the incomplete bio for deep within the Blue Sun files. The files that were now lost with Serenity.

"You…" she whispered, and his eyes met hers.

"I take it you know who I am?" he said, but Jayne must have shaken his head beside her, because he looked almost – almost – crestfallen and introduced himself. "As I understand it, you have encountered one of my kind before now. I am an Operative of the Union of Allied Planets. And you, like me, no longer exist."

He waved the soldiers with his hand and they hauled the prisoners deep within the ship to a holding area. All the while, Kaylee's mind raced. She was suddenly terrified. This wasn't anything like she had expected. Where were the questions, the threats, and the demands? It was almost as if this Operative had been expecting them, and was simply going through the motions.

She was dumped unceremoniously to the floor of an almost entirely white room. Before she or any of the others could gather their wits about them, the soldiers had retreated out of the room and a clear barrier had risen from the ceiling, separating them from the exit. Zoe was up almost immediately, throwing herself at the barrier but to no avail; it didn't as much as vibrate as she attacked it. Just as she had given in, the Operative entered and took liberty of the only feature of the room besides the door and the barrier; a white stool that had up until now escaped Kaylee's notice.

There was silence for a few moments, and then Zoe kicked the barrier again. The Operative smiled slightly, obviously amused at her attempts.

"I suppose you're the face we can finally put on the Alliance's involvement with this whole mess," said Simon, the first to speak. After he did, the Operative finally did so, too.

"If you like."

Kaylee exchanged a sideways glance with Jayne. Considering that this man should be desperately trying to establish what had happened to the creature on Serenity, he was being awfully coy. This must be some kind of interrogation technique, she decided. All they had to do was wait it out.

"What's going to happen to us?" asked Zoe, and the Operative finally stood, as if he had been waiting for this question.

"I suppose you're all wondering why I'm being so smug about this whole mess, as you described it," he mused, correctly. "But you see, although you must think that I should be desperate to rectify this situation by demanding you tell me exactly where to find the creature on your ship…I have, in actual fact, done all that I came here to accomplish."

Kaylee frowned, not understanding. But the Operative continued.

"From your perspective, you have been desperately pursued by every galactic power there is to obtain the contents of the crate you carried from Aries to Beaumonde. The contents so dangerous that normal means of transport are completely out of the question; they must be smuggled inside an innocuous cargo container that the smugglers themselves don't know what's inside."

"And then killed," said Zoe darkly. The Operative raised a hand as if to congratulate her.

"Exactly. Consider; why would the Alliance go to the trouble of manufacturing such an elaborate scheme when you yourselves, more than anyone, should know that the we do not care about trivial things as morals and laws?"

Realisation hit Simon. "You're talking about the Academy where you mutilated River."

The Operative nodded. "So please, any one of you; why would the Alliance, who have secret facilities such as the Academy, bother to travel to the extreme of exacting a plan such as one you have just lived through?"

"They wouldn't," said Zoe.

"Right again. I will tell you exactly what has happened to you this past week, and I think I am correct to say that you will not be pleased when you have learned the truth. The crate you had been travelling with was merely a misplaced shipment, travelling between two facilities similar to the Academy; the main difference being that instead of creating the perfect weapons from ordinary citizens…we were creating the perfect weapons from ordinary citizens," he said, perversely, with the hint of a smile. "If you catch my meaning."

"You're mass producing those things?" asked Simon, aghast. But the Operative shook his head.

"No. We don't understand them well enough to create them en masse. But we certainly have more than enough."

"Then why did we end up with the crate?" asked Zoe, the only one of them asking the right questions.

"When I said 'misplaced,' I of course meant 'stolen.' That is in point of fact, my task. To discover how and why someone would have the means and motivation to formulate and then set into motion a plan to obtain their own specimens of Project Nightmare." He paused and then raised his hand again. "Forgive me. Project Nightmare is the code name we have given to the study of these creatures. The name stems from an affectionate nickname one of our technicians gave to the creature during the first weeks of analysis."

"Night Stalker?" suggested Kaylee, and she was right.

"Yes. Correct. Which, I think, wraps up our session here but for one small point. I mentioned that there were two facilities devoted to the study of these subjects, and while I am not at liberty to discuss the location of the first, the second I must reveal to you as a matter of course. On board this vessel."

A rippled travelled up Kaylee's spine as soldiers poured back into the room at the Operative's electronic signal. The barrier rose back up into the ceiling, and they were waylaid once again by troopers pinning them to the ground.

"Your arrival is most fortuitous for two reasons," said the Operative, looking very pleased with himself. "Not only has the issue of the misplaced shipment been wrapped up, but with your vessel destroyed – because that's what happened to it, by the way; it sank into the ocean and then it was hit with depth charges from our vessel – there is no longer any record of your existence. Which makes, by my calculations, four more subjects for Project Nightmare. Please," he said to the guards, "Take them away."

Kicking and screaming, the four crew members were dragged from the room and down another faceless corridor. There were double doors that the guards pushed open with their bodies every four feet or so, and the only noises besides those that came from the late Serenity's crew were the shuffling of feet and the banging of the doors. Jayne managed to get his foot free from the men holding him and he lashed out at their faces, but he was quickly grabbed after landing only one solid blow against his captors. Then they found themselves in another non-descript room. The only features that stuck out were that this time there were banks of monitors and scientific equipment lining the sides of the narrower room. Kaylee had no idea in which direction the docking bay would be found, even if they managed to escape from the dozens of guards. Everything looked the same on board this ship.

A group of men in lab-coats – no, that was wrong, there were two women with them – scrutinised the Serenity crew closely and then nodded to the trooper in charge of the rest of the guards.

"Put the males together in one cell, and the females in the other," he instructed. Two hatches on either side of the room slid open; Simon and Jayne were dragged off to one, screaming all the way, and moments later the two women suffered the same fate on the opposite side.

This new cell was considerably grimier than the pristine white room they had just been ejected from, but no features stood out. The only major difference was that the deck was made of grating, rather than smooth, solid metal. The guards secured their shackles to chains built into opposite sides of the room, and having exited another transparent barrier rose up between them. Zoe thrashed in the sudden eerie silence that enveloped them, trying to somehow break her chain, but it was no use.

Kaylee's cheeks were streaked with tears of shock, and her small whimpers of fear were silenced when she noticed a circle built into the floor. She thought she could guess exactly what was going to happen when that smaller hatch opened, and the fear that thought evoked froze her entire brain, rendering her even unable to even think.

Zoe followed her eyes and arrived at the same conclusion Kaylee had, stopping her attempts to get free momentarily. Kaylee started to cry again, the sheer hopelessness of their situation occurring to her all at once. But Zoe spoke to her sharply.

"Hey. Hey! Look at me!" Kaylee obeyed on reflex, accustomed to following the first mate's orders for so long. Zoe's eyes all but fed her resilience. "It might seem like we're screwed, but don't for one second think about givin' in, 'cause when you do, it means they've won. You wanna know the real reason me and the cap'n never got so messed up by losing the war? 'Cause we fought til there was no strength left in our bodies and til the enemy was right up in our face, forcing surrender onto us."

"But…" said Kaylee, confused by the juxtaposition of Zoe's speech. "I thought you and the cap'n never got over the war." The situation allowed her to say things she would ordinarily never conceive of saying to the other woman.

Zoe smiled grimly, sitting down onto the grating beneath her. "We didn't. Haven't. But we didn't have to go to the fong luh because of it. Some guys who live through what we did, they spend the rest of their days in a padded room. But not us – because we knew we'd done everything we could to stop the enemy from winning. If it wasn't enough, then that ain't our business – it's like you were sayin' to Jayne, it's tryin' that counts."

The smaller hatch clunked abruptly. Kaylee leapt back in fear, rattling her chain. But oddly, at the same time a fierce resolve rose up in her. Zoe was right; she would be a hypocrite if she had told Jayne that it was trying that mattered if she immediately went and just gave in. And if there was one thing her folks had taught her, it was how to not be a hypocrite.

Zoe was pulling her chain forward and her cuffs down her legs, over her boots. Kaylee considered attempting a similar manoeuvre but then hatch popped open, releasing the same gas – unbeknownst to Kaylee – that had filled the cargo container they had been hauling; the gas that served as an anaesthetic to subdue the alien creatures while they were in transit.

Zoe stood, her arms now relatively free in front of her. She caught Kaylee's eyes again.

"Now listen up. It's gonna come at you and not give in, so you gotta do the same thing to it. No mercy. It's an animal, remember? You can outthink it, and if you can do that then you can sure as hell beat it. Your feet are your main weapons, but don't forget your body can be just as useful. Sit on it if need be, but don't let it near your face."

Kaylee nodded, the deathly calm that comes with paralysing fear washing over her. She had never been as terrified in all her life, and it was as if her brain had gone beyond the ability to measure the emotion in the same way she couldn't hear certain frequencies; it existed, but it was like it wasn't there. The hatch started to rumble, and an ovoid organic structure started to rise from its depths. A similar motion was being carried out in Zoe's cell, but the first mate was focussing intently on Kaylee. The engineer frowned slightly, trying to figure it out, but Zoe answered for her.

"I don't give a damn about me. I was never much good at anything 'sides fightin'." Tears stung at her eyes slightly. "And I've lost the only thing I cared about more than everything else in all the 'verse. But I'll be damned if this is the end of you. You're better'n this."

Kaylee broke her eye contact with Zoe as the ovoid emerged completely in the cell. Suddenly the fear evaporated. She realised that she wasn't just fighting for herself, but for Zoe. And Simon. And Jayne. And River, Inara and the Captain. And everyone else who had faced these monsters. And Wash, and Shepherd Book, and everyone else who had taken a stand against the Alliance, or the Reavers, or the New Independents, or any other face of evil and been consumed by it. And even those people who had taken a stand and survived, lived to fight another day; perhaps those people most of all, because Kaylee resolved that she was going to join the ranks of those people and stand proud among them. _I fought with all of my strength and I proved that one person can survive evil; I stood before it, alone, and withstood everything it could throw at me. I am worthy._

She had never been a fighter, but now she understood where Mal and Zoe's reserve of strength came from. They must feel this feeling every time they stared Death in the face. Being alone and yet part of an elite community of warriors who somehow stood with you. That Mal and Zoe had volunteered to fight and Kaylee had had it thrust upon her made no difference; they were kin now, and not even the monster lurking inside that egg could change that.

She nodded resolutely at it, and it started to open, as if it could act now that the terms of engagement had been decided. A moment of chilling calm passed after it had fully opened, and then the hand-like creature sprang from inside, clutching towards Kaylee's face.

She leaped sideways out of its way, constrained in her movements by the chain that tied her to the bulkhead. Sounds of a struggle reached her ears from the opposing cell, but she dared not take her eyes off the creature that scrabbled for its balance on the far side of the cell.

No sooner had she thought that did her eyes reflexively flicker to the chain that constrained her, and she noticed that the bolts that held it in place were corroded. A few strong jerks might be enough to release it entirely.

The creature flopped towards her, and bile rose in the back of her throat. That was her final defence, she thought; she could puke on it.

It leaped at her again, but her dexterity outmatched the creature's; it hit the far bulkhead as she danced sideways out of its reach.

Immediately she started to tug and jerk at the bolts that held her imprisoned against the wall, and the metal bracket started to give way against her efforts. With a final, gargantuan effort she heaved and the bolts popped loose of the bulkhead, allowing her full freedom of movement. The creature sensed her new advantage, and twitched in the corner of the cell. Kaylee utilised its hesitation by sitting down on the ground as Zoe had done, working her hands down towards her legs in an effort to free them.

Just as she had reached the point of no return, the creature darted forward and managed to within six inches of her feet before her hands were free and she whipped the chain at it, sending it skipping back to the corner it had originated from.

She released the breath that she had been holding, astonished by its ability to sense the moment of her greatest weakness. She re-evaluated the creature, knowing that one mistake would cost her dearly.

She started to whirl the chain and realised that she would have to go on the offensive; it stayed in the corner, waiting for its moment to strike. She built up the kinetic motion of the chain and sent it lancing down towards the creature, but it darted sideways out of the way, much in the same way she had avoided its attack when it had had the upper hand.

She swung again but this time it ran forward underneath her attack. Having committed her weight to the offensive, she found herself closer than she cared to be to the creature and tried to step back, but the damage had been done.

It started to climb up her leg and reached her stomach before she recalled Zoe's earlier advice. She all but ran into the perspex separating the two cells, squashing the creature between her weight and the transparent material. It slid limply down to the deck, but quickly recovered, darting back towards her feet. She backed away quickly, sweeping along the ground with the chain, and it was deterred again successfully.

Suddenly she detected a change in it as it quivered and became still. Everything about this creature made her skin crawl, and when it started to clamber towards her it was too much. She ran backwards towards the opposite bulkhead, clubbing down with the chain, but after missing it for a third time she forgot where she was in relation to the rest of the cell and her leg stumbled against something soft and organic.

_The egg,_ she remembered, and she was falling down towards the deck. She hit her head against the bulkhead and she suddenly felt lighter.

Sluggishly she looked up and saw that the alien was clambering up along her legs, dangerously intent on reaching her face. She tried to bat it away but her arms weren't working properly, and it easily evaded her attacks.

She heard Zoe banging on the perspex separating them, trying to rouse her to a further defence, but it was no use. Before she knew it, the creature had reached her face and enveloped her with a warm, organic moistness against which her whole body rebelled but could not rouse itself to defend against.

Just before her brain deactivated out of a combination of physical trauma and blind, screaming horror the wet tube pushing against her lips evoked, she had time for one, final thought, other than a feeling of bitter regret in knowing she would not join those ranks of the proud undefeated; that she had been consumed by this evil.

_I hope the others are all right._

How little she knew.

_**The End.**_

_A/N_

…_Of Void, that is. But don't go thinking I'd leave you on such a sour note! Our guys will be back in the next instalment. I wanted to leave Void just as it was – a slow descent into suffering, loss and blind bewilderment (aren't I nice?). Don't be put off by the nasty ending because the next phase of the story, entitled Nightmare, will be up just as soon as I've figured out the exact timeline of events. Think of this as a season finale, except without the six month wait to find out what happens. And hopefully, without the sense of anti-climax watching the second part often brings._

_Thank you very, very much to those people who read this story, and even more to those who reviewed. Although I would probably still be writing this if no one read it, it gives me inspiration to carry on, knowing that there are those of you who enjoy what I write. Academy Award acceptance style speech over, but I wanted to let you know that I appreciate it!_

_If anyone wants me to email you when the new story is put up, let me know your email address so I can get in touch. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year._

_Until next time…_


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